As St. Thomas Aquinas says, ‘Si falsarii pecuniæ vel alii malefactores statim per seculares principes juste morti traduntur, multo magis hæretici statim, ex quo de hæresi convincuntur, possunt non solum excommunicarised et juste occidi.’ ( Summa , pars ii. qu. xi. art. iii.)
For their details see Parnell, Penal Laws. In common parlance, the ‘penal laws’ date from the treaty of Limerick, but the legislative assaults on Irish Catholicism began with Elizabeth.
The very curious life of Bedell, by his son-in-law, Alexander Clogy, which was written in 1641–’2, and which formed the basis of the narrative of Burnet, was printed from the MSS. in the British Museum in 1862. We have an amusing instance of the uncompromising Protestantism of Bedell in the fact that when the insurgents who retained him prisoner gave him permission to perform the Anglican service freely with his friends, he availed himself of that permission to celebrate the thanksgiving for the 5th of November.
I have endeavoured to trace them in a book called The Leaders of Public Opinion in Ireland.
See a note in Buckle, History of Civilisation , vol. i. p. 385
This was the opinion expressed by Charles James Fox ‘The only foundation for toleration,’ he said, ‘is a degree of scepticism, and without it there can be none. For if a man believes in the saving of souls, he must soon think about the means; and if by cutting off one generation he can save many future ones from hell fire, it is his duty to do it.’ (Rogers, Recollections p. 49.)
On the influence of this command on Christian persecution, see Bayle, Contrains-les d'entrer , pt. ii. ch. iv., and some striking remarks in Renan, Vie de Jésus , pp. 412, 413; to which I may add as an illustration the following passage of Simancas:—‘Hæretici pertinaces publice in conspectu populi comburendi sunt; et id fieri solet extra portas civitatis: quemadmodum olim, in Deut. cap. xvii., idolatra educebatur ad portas civitatis, et lapidibus obruebatur.’ ( De Cathol. Instit. p. 375.) Taylor, in noticing this argument, finely says that Christ, by refusing to permit his apostles to call down fire like Elias on the misbeliver, clearly indicated his separation from the intolerance of Judaism. ( Liberty of Prophesying , sec. 22.)
Apol. cap. xxiv.
Ad Auxentium.
The reader may find a full statement of the passages from the Fathers favourable to toleration in Whitby, On Laws against Heretics (1723, published anonymously); Taylor, Liberty of Prophesying ; Bayle, Contrains-les d'entrer ; and many other books. The other side of the question has been developed, among other writers, by Palmer, On the Church ; Muzzarelli, Simancas, Paramo, and all the other old writers on the Inquisition. There is, I think an impartial view of the whole subject in Milman, History of Christianity. See, too, Blackstone's Commentaries , b. iv. ch. iv.
Inst. lib. v. c. xx. Lactantius embraced Christianity during the persecution of Diocletian, but it appears almost certain that his Institutions were mainly written, or at least published, at Trèves during the reign of Constantine, and he never abandoned the tolerant maxims he proclaimed. This was especially creditable to him, as he was tutor to the son of Constantine, and consequently singularly tempted to avail himself of the arm of power. Unfortunately, this very eloquent writer, who was certainly one of the ablest in the early Church, possessed comparatively little influence on account of his passion for paradox. He maintained that no Christian might engage in warfare, or execute a capital sentence; he was one of the strongest assertors of the opinion that God the Father had a figure (a controversy raised by Origen), and he was accused of denying the personality of the Holy Ghost. ‘Lactantius,’ said Jerome, ‘quasi quidam fluvius eloquentiæ Tullianæ, utinam tam nostra confirmare potuisset, quam facile aliena destruxit!’ ( Epist. lib. ii. epist. 14). The works of Lactantius were condemned by a council presided over by Pope Gelasius in the 5th century. See Alexandri, Hist. Ecclesiastica (Paris 1699), tom. iv. pp. 100–103; Ampère, Hist. Littéraire de la France , tom. i pp. 218–223. Some of the peculiar notions of Lactantius appeared at a later period among the Waldenses.
Socrates, lib. iv. c. xvi. The Donatists were also fierce persecutors and Nestorius showed his sentiments clearly enough when he said to the Emperor, ‘Give me the earth purged from heretics, and I will give you heaven.’ The Spanish Arians seem to have originated the intense intolerance that has been perpetuated from generation to generation in Spain.
Cod. Theod. lib, xvi. tit. 8. The apostate ‘sustinebit meritas pœnas.’ Constantius afterwards made the penalty confiscation of goods. A Jew who married a Christian incurred the penalty of death. See, on this department legislation, Bédarride, Hist. des Juifs, pp. 16–20.
Milman, History of Christianity, vol. ii. pp. 372–375. See also the review of these measures in Palmer, On the Church, vol. ii. p. 250. The Arians had to pay ten times the taxes of the orthodox. The first law that has come down to us, in which the penalty of death is annexed to the simple profession of a heresy, is law 9 De Hœreticis in the Theodosian Code. It was made by Theodosius the Great, and was applicable only to some sects of Manichæans. It is worthy of notice that this is also the first law in which we meet the title of ‘Inquisitors of the Faith.’ Optatus in the reign of Constantine advocated the massacre of the Donatists on the ground of the Old Testament precedents (see Milman).
‘Addite aras publicas atque delabra, et consuetudinis vestræ celebrate solemnia: nec enim prohibemus preteritæ usurpations officia libera luce tractari.’— Cod. Th. lib. ix. tit. 16, cc. i. ii.
The first emperor who refused it was Gratian (Zosimus, book iv.).
Eusebius, Vita Const. lib. ii. c. xliv. xlv.
See Eusebius, Vita Const. lib. ii. c. xliv. xlv., lib. iv. c. xxiii.; Theodoret, lib. vi. c. xxi.; Sozomen, lib. iii. c. xvii. Eusebius repeats this assertion over and over again; see Milman, History of Christianity, vol. ii. pp. 460–464 ed. 1840).
5 Speaking of his youth, Libanius says: ‘Plus apud Deos quam apud homines in terra convresabatur, tametsi lex prohiberet, quam audenti violare capitis pœna fuit. Verumtamen cum illis ipsis vitam agens et imquam legem et impium legislatorem deridebat.’ ( De Vita sua, Libanii Opera [ed. 1627], vol. ii. p. 11.) However in his oration Pro Templis, Libanius says distinctly that Constantine did not disturb the worship of the temples. It is hard to reconcile these two passages and the last with the statements of Eusebius, but I suppose the fact is that the law was made, but was generally suffered to be inoperative
See a great deal of evidence of this in Beugnot, Décadence du Polytéisme. But it is absurd to speak of Constantine, as M. Beugnot does, as an apostle of tolerance. ‘Connivance,’ as Burke once said, ‘is the relaxation of tyranny, and not the definition of liberty.’ One of Constantine's proclamations of tolerance seems to have been posterior to the prohibition of public sacrifices.
Cod. Th. xvi. 10, 2–4. The terms of one of these laws seem to imply that Constantine had made a similar enactment: ‘Gesset superstitio: sacrificiorum aboleatur insania. Nam quicunque contra legem divi Principis Parentis nastri, et hanc nostræ mansuetudinis jussionem, ausus fuerit sacrificia celebrare, competens in eum vindicta et præsens sententia exeratur.’ For a full discussion of this very perplexing subject see Milman, Hist. of Christianity, and Gibbon, ch, xxi.
Thus, for example, the pagan Zosimus tells us expressly that in the beginning of the reign of Theodosius his coreligionists were still at liberty to worship in the temples. The history is in a great measure a repetition of that of the persecution which the Christians had themselves endured. Generally they had been allowed freely to celebrate their worship, but from that time, eiths through popular indignation or imperial suspicions, there were sudden out bursts of fearful persecution.
See the laws De Templis.
Pro Templis.
It is said, however, that, notwithstanding these laws, the Novatians (probably on account of the extremely slight difference that separated them from the orthodox) were allowed to celebrate their worship till A.D. 525, when the Bishop of Rome succeeded in procuring their suppression. (Taylor, Liberts of Prophesying, epistle dedicatory.)
‘Neither let those who refuse to obey their bishops and priests think within themselves that they are in the way of life and of salvation, for the Lord God says in Deuteronomy, “Whoever will act presumptuously, and will not hear the priest or the judge, whoever he may be in those days, he shall die, and the people will hear and fear, and do no more presumptuously.” God commanded those to be slain who would not obey the priests or the judges set overwlhem for a time. Then, indeed, they were slain with the sword while the carnal circumcision still remained; but now, since the spiritual circumcision has begun amid the servants of God, the proud and contumacious are killed when they are cast out of the Church. For they cannot live without it; for the house of God is one, and there can be salvation for no one except in the Church.’ (Cypriani Epist., lib. i. ep. 11.) That excommunication is a severer penalty than death, and that the Church, having the power of inflicting the first, may also inflict the second, was one of the arguments of Bellarmine in favour of persecution, and was answered by Taylor, Liberty of Prophesying. sec. 14.
See his Retract. lib. ii. c. v.; Epist. xciii. (in some editions xlviii.) cxxvii clxxxv.; Contra Gaudentium, c. xxv.; Contra Epist. Parmeniani, c. vii There are many other massages on the subject scattered through his writings.
Epist I. Bonifacio
See especially Epist c. clviii. clix. clx. On the other hand, Augustine bases the right of punishing heresy on the enormity of the crime, which he considered greater than any other ( Contra Gaudentium, lib. i c. xix.) He assimilates heresy to blasphemy, and says that blasphemy is justly punished by death. ( Epist. ev, otherwise clxvi.) He adduces as applicable precedents all the worst Old Testament persecutions, and he defends the condemnation of some Donatists to death by Constantme, on the ground of justice, though he applauds on the ground of mercy the remission of the sentence. ( Contra Parmenianum, lib. i. c. viii.) His general view seems to have been that heretics might justly be punished by death, but that the orthodox should not exact strict justice. However, he vacillated a good deal, and both moderate and extreme persecutors find much in their defence in his writings. Religious liberty he emphatically cursed. ‘Quid est enim pejor mors animæ quam libertas erroris!’ ( Epist. clxvi.)
‘Quis enim nostrum, quis vestrum non laudat leges ab imperatoribus datas contra sacrificia paganorum? Et certe longe ibi pœna severior conststuts est; illius quippe impietatis capitale supplicium est.’ ( Epist. xciii., is some editions xcviii.) See Gibbon, ch. xxviii.
Ampère, Hist. Lttéraire de la France, tom. i. pp 319, 320; Milman, vol. m. p. 60; Taylor, Liberty of Prophaying, sec. 14. St. Martin, however, was one of the most active in destroying the pagan temples, and used in that employment to range over his diocese at the head of a perfect army of monks (See Gibbon.)
The history of this has been written in a very striking book called La Tolérance Ecclesiastique et Civile, by Thaddeus de Trautsmandorff. The author was a canon of Olmutz, and afterwards Bishop of Konigsgratz in Bohemia. The work appeared in Latin, at Pavia, in 1783, and was translated into French in 1796. It is one of the most remarkable books in favour of tolerance produced by any priest in the 18th century. See, too, on the form of intercession employed by the Inquisitors, Limborch, Historia Inquisitionis (Amsterdam, 1692), pp. 365–367, 372.
On the influence of the Councils see Palmer, vol. ii. p. 333; Muzarelli Sur l'Inquisition.
1 Vide St. Jerome, passim.
Natalis Alexander, Historia Ecclesiastica, tom. v. p. 337. The following are all the cases Simaucas could collect: ‘Antiquissima est pœna ignis adversus impios et hæreticos, ut ex actis Chalcedonensis concilii satis constare potest. Illic enim episcopus Alexandrinus dixisse traditur: “Si Eutvches præter dogmata eeelesme sapit non solum pœna dignus est sed et igne.” Anatolium quoque hæretieum igm vivum combusserunt, ut Nicephorus prodidit, lib. xviii Eccl. Hist. c. 4. Gregorius quoque. lib. i. Dialogorum, refert Basilium magum Romæ fuisse combustum et rem gestam laudat. Et propter impiam atque scelestam disciplinam Templarii concremati fuerunt … Et Basilius hæreticus communi suffragio combustus fuit, sicuti Zonaras retulit in imperio Alexii Comneni; alibi quoque hæretici jam olim vivi cremati sunt, quemadmodum Paulus Æmilius, lib. vi de Rebus Francorum, retulit. Item constitutionibus Siculis cavetur ut vivi hæretici in conspectu populi comburantur, flammarum commissi judicio Quod legibus quoque Hispanis constitu tum et consuetudine jam pridem receptum est.’ ( De Catholicis Institutis natrus [Romæ, 1575], pp. 363, 364)
The Fourth Council of the Lateran is esteemed œcumenical in the Church of Rome, and exercised very great influence both on this account and because it was the council which first defined the doctrine of transubstaptiation. Its decree on persecution, however, had been anticipated by the Council of Avignon, in 1209, which enjoined all bishops to call upon the civil power to exter minate heretics. (Rohrbacher, Hist. de l Eglise Catholique, tom, xvii p. 220.) The bull of Innocent III. threatened any prince who refused to extirpate heretics from his realm, with excommunication, and with the forfeiture of his dominious. See the text in Eymericus, Directorium Inquisitorum (Romæ 1578), p. 60.
Llorente, Hist. de l'Inquisition, tom. iv. pp 271, 272. This does not include those who perished by the branches of the Spanish Inquisition in Mexico, Lima, Carthagena, the Indies, Sicily, Sardinia, Oran, and Malta Llorente having been himself at one time secretary in the Inquisition, and having during the occupation by the French had access to all the secret papers of the tribunal, will always be the highest authority. One would fain hope, however (and it is very probable), that these figures are overstated, and Prescott has detected two or three instances of exaggeration in the calculations on which they are based. ( Ferdinana and Isabella, vol. iii. pp. 492, 493.) At the same time Llorente has adduced some fearful evidence of particular in stances of persecution, which serve to show that his grand total is scarcely as improbable as might be supposed. Thus Mariana says that 2,000 persons were burnt in Andalusia in 1482, the year of the establishment of the Inquisition. An old historian, named Bernaldez, says that 700 were burnt at Seville between 1482 and 1489; and an inscription placed over the door of the Inquisition of Seville in 1524, declares that nearly 1,000 persons had been burnt since the expulsion of the Jews in 1492. (Llorente, tom i pp 273–275.)
Sarpi, Hist, of Council of Trent. Grotius says 100,000
‘Upon the 16th of February, 1568, a sentence of the Holy Office condemned all the inhabitants of the Netherlands to death as heretics. From this universal doom only a few persons especially named were excepted. A proclamation of the king, dated ten days later, confirmed this decree of the In quisition, and ordered it to be carried into instant execution…. Three millions of people, men, women, and children, were sentenced to the scaffold in three lines.’ (Motley's Rise of the Dutch Republic, vol II. p. 155.)
One of the advantages of this being that the victim had more time for repeutance. The following edifying anecdote is from Eymericus: ‘In Catha lonia, in civitate Barchinon, fuerunt tres hæretici, ut impenitentes sed non relapsi, traditi brachio sæculari; et cum unus eorum qui erat sacerdos faisset lgni expositus, et ex uno latere jam aliqualiter adustus, clamavit quod educeretur quia volebat abjurare, et pœnitebat. Et sic factum est: verum si bene vel male, nescio.’ ( Directorium Inquisitorum, p. 335.) Castellio notices in his time the bitter complaints of some zealous theologians ‘si quem videant strangulari, ac non vivum lentâ flammâ torreri.’ (Cluten, De Hœreticis persequendis [1610]: Preface of Martin Bellius) See for a very horrible instance (produced, however, by aggravated ciscumstances), Sessa, De Judœis (Turin, 1717), p. 96. I may mention here that Eymericus was an Inquisitor in Aragon about 1368 His Directorium was printed at Barcelona as early as 1503; it passed through a great many editions, and with the Commentaries of Pegna was long the standing guide of the Inquisition. The admiring biographer of Eymericus sums up his clims upon posterity in one happy sentence: ‘Hæc magna est et postrema viri laus, eum acri odio hæereticos omnes habuisse.’ Independently of its value as throwing light upon the Inquisition in its earlier stages, this book is remarkable as giving a singularly clear view of the heresies of the time. I have not met anywhere else with so satisfactory a review of the opinions of Averroes. In addition to the brief sketch prefixed to the Directorium, there is a full history of the life of Eymericus (which was rather remarkable) in Touron, Hist. des Hommes Illustres de l'Ordre de St. Dominique
The tortures of the Inquisition I have noticed in the last chapter; but I may add that this mode of examination was expressly enjoined by Pope Innocent IV. in a bull beginning: ‘Teneatur præterea potestas seu rector omnes hæreticos quos captas habuerit cogere citra membii diminutionem et mortis periculum tanquam vere latrones et homicidas animarum, et fures Sacramentorum Dei et fidei Christianæ, errores suos expresse fateri et accusare alios hæreticos.’ Clement IV. issued a bull nearly in the same terms (Eymericus, Appendix, p. 9). It was decided by the Inquisitors that even a heretic who confessed his guilt might be tortured to discover his accomplices (Carena, De Inquisitione [Lugduni, 1649], pp. 69–73) The rule was that the tortures were not to be repeated, but it was decided that they might be continued through three days: ‘Si quæstionatus decenter noluerit fateri veritatem … poterit ad terrorem, vel etiam ad veritatem, secunda dies vel tertia assignari ad continuandum tormenta, non ad iterandum, quia iterari non debent, nisi novis supervenientibus indiciis contra eum, quia tunc possunt; sed continuari non prohibentur.’ (Eymericus, p. 314.) Paramo, a Sicilian Inquisitor, assures us that the Inquisition was like the good Samaritan, pouring into its wounded country the wine of a wholesome severity mingled with the oil of mercy. He was also of opinion that it resembled the Jewish tabernacle, in which the rod of Aaron and the manna (of mercy) lay side by side. ( De Origin. Inq . p. 153.)
The following is part of the sentence pronounced upon the relapsed heretic: ‘Tu in reprobum sensum datus, maligno spiritu ductus pariter et seductus, præeligisti torqueri diris et perpetuis cruciatibus in infernum, et hic temporali bus ignibus corporaliter consumari, quam adhærendo consilio saniori ab errori bus damnabilibus ac pestiferis resilire.’ (Eymericus, p. 337.)
It was the invariable rule to confiscate the entire property of the impenitent heretic, a rule which Paramo justifies on the ground that the crime of the heretic is so great that something of his impurity falls upon all related to him, and that the Almighty (whom he blasphemously terms the First Inquisitor) deprived both Adam and his descendants of the Garden of Eden. The children of the heretic were thus left absolutely destitute, and with a stigma upon them that in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries was sufficient to shut them out from all sympathy, from all charity, and from all hope The thought that those who were most dear to him would probably be abandoned either to starvation or to the life of the prostitute, was doubtless one of most acute pangs of the martyr, and the hope of preventing such a catastrophe one of the most powerful inducements to recant. In this rule we have also an explanation of those trials of dead men for heresy which the Catholic clergy so frequently instituted. Protestants sometimes regard these simply as displays of impotent malice. Nothing, however, can be more false. They had the very intelligible object of robbing the children of the dead. ‘Juste enim proceditur contra defunctos hæreticos Primo, ut memoria ejus damnatur Seeundo, ut bona illius per fiscum ab hæredibus defuncti seu a quibushbet aliis possessoribus auferantur.’ (Paramo, De Orig et Progressu Sancti Inquisitionis [Madrid, 1598], p. 588.) The confiscation of the goods of the heretic was authorised by a full of Innocent III. (on the ground that children are in the Divine judgment often punished for the offences of their fathers), and again by Alexander IV (Eymericus, pp. 58, 59, 64.) The following passage from an old ecclesiastical lawyer gives a vivid picture of the ferocity displayed towards the children of heretics: ‘Ipsi filii hæreticorum adeo sunt effecti a jure incapaces et inhabiles ad succedendum patri, quod illi etiam in uno nummo succedere non possunt: immo semper debent ir miseria et egestate sordescere sicut filii reorum criminis læsæ majestatis humanæ, adco quod nihil aliud els sit relinquendum, nisi sola vita quæ ex misericordia largitur, et tales esse debent in hoc mundo ut cis vita sit supplicium et mors solatium.’ (Farinacius, De Dehctis et Pænix , p 205; Venice, 1619.) However, it was provided that children who betrayed their parents preserved their inheritance On the laws resulting from these notions, see Prescott, Ferdinand and Isabella , vol. i. pp 262, 263.
Before operating in any district, the Inqui-itors always made a proclamation offering pardon under certain conditions to those who confessed and retracted their heresies within thirty or forty days Mariana says that when this proclamation was made, on the first establishment of the Inquisition in Anda usia, 17,000 recantations followed ( De Rebus Hispanicus lib. xxiv. c. 17.)
Hallam, Const. Hist .
Ibid . And then in 1562 it was enacted, that all who had ever graduated at the universities or received holy orders, all lawyers, all magistrates, must take the oath of supremacy when tendered to them, under pain of forfeiture or imprisonment during the royal pleasure; and if after three months they refused to take the oath when again tendered to them, they were guilty of high treason and condemned to death. Now the discontent of the Catholics might be a very good reason for making them take the oath of allegiance, which is simply a test of loyalty. It might even be a reason for making the oath of supremacy obligatory on those who for the future aspired to offices of importance—in other words, for excluding the Catholics from such offices; but to pass a retrospective law which made almost every educated Roman Catholic, if he refused to take an oath which was absolutely and confessedly irreconcilable with the doctrines of his Church, liable to be punished with death, was as sweeping a measure of persecution as any that history records. And this was done many years before the bull which deposed Elizabeth. The misconceptions which ignorance, and worse than ignorance, accumulated around this subject have been so completely dispelled by Hallam and Macaulay that I will onl add one remark. The principal apology which was published for the policy of Elizabeth towards the Catholics, was Bishop Bilson's Christian Subjection , in 1695. In that work the coercive laws were openly justified on the ground of the absolute sinfulness of toleration (pp. 16–29) Nor was it merely the public profession of error which was rightly prohibited. This distinction the Bishop indignantly repudiates. ‘No corner is so secret,’ he says, addressing the Catholics, ‘no prison so close, but your impiety there suffered doth offend God, infect others, and confirm your own frowardness. If your religion be good, why should it lack churches? If it be naught, why should it have chambersty? A Christian prince may not pardon or wink at your falsehood’ (p. 26). See also on the duty of intolerance, pp. 16–29. Milner, in his Letters to a Prebendary , has collected much evidence on the subject. There is much truth as well as bitter eloquence in the taunt of an old persecuted Puritan, when he denounced Anglicanism as ‘the Church that is planted in the blood of her mother.’
Elrington, Life of Usher , vol. i p. 73.
For the circumstances of the persecution in Scotland, see Wodrow's History ; and for a summary of the laws against Nonconformists in England, Seal's History of the Puritans , vol. ii. pp. 695, 696.
Buckle, Hist ., vol. ii. p. 231; McKenzie, Laws of Scotland .
McCrie, Life of Knox (ed. 1840), p. 246.
Much evidence of this is collected in Buckle, vol. i. pp. 508–522.
Macaulay, Essays , vol. ii. p. 140; Laing, Sweden .
See the history, in Bancroft.
Temple, On the United Provinces .
Bayle, art. Augustine , note H. See, too, on the general intolerance of the Dutch clergy, Hallam, Hist. of Lit ., vol iii. p. 289.
Biog Univ ., art. Descartes , Voltaire, Lettres Philosophiques , xiv. Considering the writings of Descartes, this is perhaps the most preposterous accusation ever brought against a philosopher, if we except one of which Linnæus was the victim. Some good people in Sweden desired, it is said, to have his system of botany suppressed, because it was based upon the discovery of the sexes of the plants, and was therefore calculated to inflame the minds of youth. (Gioja, Filosofia della Statistica , tom ii. p. 389.)
Palmer, On the Church , vol. i. p. 380.
And also in reply to the Wittenberg theologians. At an earlier period, when his translation of the New Testament was proscribed, he had advocated to’ eration. For a full view of his sentiments, see Henry's Life of Calvin , vol. ii. pp. 232–242.
McCrie's Life of Knox , p. 246. It is in his Appellation that this great apostle of murder most fully expounded his views: ‘None provoking the people to idolatrie oght to be exempted from the punishment of death…. The whole tribes did in verie dede execute that sharp judgement against the tribe of Benjamin for a lesse offense than for idolatrie. And the same oght to be done wheresoever Christ Jesus and his Evangill is so receaved in any realme province or citie that the magistrates and people have solemnly avowed and promised to defend the same, as under King Edward of late days was done in England. In such places, I say, it is not only lawful to punish to the death such as labour to subvert the true religion, but the magistrates and people are bound to do so onless they wil provoke the wrath of God against themselves … And therefore, my Lordes, to return to you, seing that God hath armed your handes with the sworde of justice, seing that His law most streatly commandeth idolaters and fals prophetes to be punished with death, and that you be placed above your subjects to reigne as fathers over their children, and further seing that not only I, but with me manie thousand famous, godlie, and learned persons, accuse your Byshoppes and the whole rabble of the Papistical clergie of idolatrie, of murther, and of blasphemic against God committed it appertaineth to your Honours to be vigilant and carefull in so weightic a matter. The question is not of earthly substance, but of the glorie of God, and of the salvation of yourselves.’ (Knox's Works , Laing's edition, vol. iv. pp. 500–515) In a debate in the House of Lords, July 15, 1864, Lord Honghton stated, on the authority of Mr. Froude, that that gentleman in the course of his researches had discovered addresses from both houses of Convocation to Queen Elizabeth, requesting her to put Mary Queen of Scots to death as quickly as possible, which she might justly do, Mary ‘being an idolater.’
Neal's History of the Puritans (ed. 1754), vol. i. pp. 40, 41.
This is noticed by Hallam and other writers.
Thus, for example, Jurieu, the great antagonist of Bossuet, the most eminent French minister in Holland (he was pastor of Rotterdam), and certainly one of the most distinguished Protestants of his day, calls universal toleration, ‘ce dogme Socmien, le plus dangereux de tous ceux de la secte Sociniennc, puisqu'il va à ruiner le Christianisme et à établir l'indifférence des religions.’ ( Droits des deux Souverains en Matiére de Religion, la Conscience et l'Expérience [Rotteidam, 1687], p. 14.) This work is anonymous, but there is, I believe, no doubt about its authorship It was written in reply to the Contrains-les d'entrer of Bayle, with the rather unnecessary object of showing that the French Protestants repudiated the tolerant maxims of that great writer.
I commend the following passage to the special attention of my readers ‘Peut-on nier que le paganisme est tombé dans le monde par l'autorité des empereurs Romains? On peut assurer sans témérité que le paganisme seroit encore debout, et que les trois quarts de l'Europe seroient encore payens si Constantin et ses successeurs n'avoient emploié leur autorité pour l'abohr. Mais, je vous prie, de quelles voies Dieu s'est-il servi dans ces derniers siécles pour rétablir la véritable religion dans l'Occident? Les rois de Suéde, ceux de Danemarek, ceux d'Angleterre, les magistrates souverains de Suisse, des Pais-Bas, des villes libres d'Allemagne, les princes électeurs, et autres princes souverains de l'empire, n'ont-ils pas emploié leur autorité pour abbatre le Papisme? … En vérité il faut être bien téméraire pour condamner des voics dont la Providence s'est constamment servi pour établir la véritable religion; excepté le premier établissement du Christianisme, et sa conservation, dans laquelle Dieu a voulu qu'il y eÛt un miracle sensible; c'est pourquoi iln'a pas voulu que l'autorité s'en mélât; excepté, dis-je, cet endroit de l'histoire de l'Église, on voit constamment partout que Dieu fait entrer l'autorité pour établir la véritable religion et pour ruiner les fausses.’ ( Droit des deus Souverains, pp. 280–282.)
Hallam, Hist. of Literature, vol. i. p. 554.
See the collection of approbations quored by Beza, De Hœreticis; McKenkie, Life of Calvin, pp. 79–89; and the remarks in Coleridge, Notes on English Divines, vol. i. p. 49.
His name was originally Châtillon or Châteillon, which, after the fashion of the age, he latinised into Castelho; but at the beginning of his career, some one having called him by mistake Castalio, he was so charmed by the name, which, by reminding him of the Castalian fount, seemed a good angury for his literary career, that he adopted it. See, for a full account of his life, Bayle, art. Castalio, and Henry, Life of Calvin; and, for a short notice, Hallam, Hist. of Literature, vol. i. p. 557. Besides the works I have noticed in the text, Castalio translated the dialogues of the famous Socmian Ochino, and an anonymous German work of the mystical school of Tauler, edited the Sibyline verses (his preface is given to the recent edition by Alexander [Paris, 1846]), wrote a defence of his translation of the Bible (which translation seems to have been an indifferent performance), and published some minor essays or dialogues.
From which he somewhat rashly concluded that it ought not to be resumed in the Bible. ‘For my part,’ said Niebuhi, when a young German pastor expressed his scruples about reading what he believed to be simply a love song ‘I should deem the Bible itself imperfect if it did not include an expression of the deepest and strongest passion of humanity.’ The history of the interpretations of the Song of Solomon would be long and curious—from the Jewish Cabalists, who, regarding heaven as the union of man with the Deity by love, and death as the ‘kiss of God,’ esteemed the Song of Solomon the highest expression of this transcendental union, to the somewhat fantastic criticisms of M. Renan.
On which Beza comments: ‘Hac impietate quid tandem magis impium aut diabolicum ipsæ unquam inferiorum portæ exhalarunt.’ ( De Hœreticis a Civili Magistratu puniendis: Libellus advers a Martini Bellii farraginem et Novorum Academicorum sectam [1554], p. 58)
‘Quis non putet Christum aliquem esse Molochum ant cjus generis aliquem Deum si sibi vivos homines immolari, comburique velit? Quis velit servire Christo eâ conditione, ut si in aliquâ re inter tot controversias ab iis dissdeat, qui habent in alios potestatem, vivus comburatur ipsius Christi jussu crudelius quam in tauro Phalaridis, etiamsi in medlis flammis Christum magnâ voce concelebret, et se in eum pleno ore credere vociferetur?’ (Preface of Martin Bellius in Joachim Cluten's De Hœreticis persequendis, ed. 1610.) This work consists of a collection of passages from different authors (two of them by Castellio) in favour of toleration.
See Bayle and Henry. Castellio, when publishing his edition of the Bible, made the preface the vehicle of a warm appeal for toleration (which is given in Cluten). Calvin, among other things, accused him of stealing wood for his fire—an accusation which was solemnly refuted. Bayle has collected much evidence to show that Castellio was a man of spotless character, singularly loved by those about him, intensely amiable, keenly sensible of the attacks of which he was the object. Castellio has himself made a collection of the epithets Calvin in one short work heaped upon him: ‘Vocas me subinde in Gallico libello: blasphemum, calumniatorem, malignum, canem latrantem, plenum ignorantise et bestialitatis, sacrarum literarum impurum corruptorem, Dei prorsus derisodem, omnis religionis contemptorem, impudentem, impurum canem, impiuum, obscœnum, torti perversique ingenii, vagum, balatronem, nebulonem vero appellas octies; et hæc omnia longe copiosius quam a me recensentur facts in libello duorum foliorum et quidern perparvorum’
Essais , liv. i. c. 34.
Beza, Vita Calvini .
It is sufficiently refuted by Beza himself in his answer to Castellio, when he speaks of those who objected to the burning of Servetus (he calls them ‘emissaries of Satan’) as amounting to a sect. He also specifies two or three writers, of whom the principal seems to have been Clebergius. I have never been able to meet with the work of this author, but Beza represents him as objecting absolutely to all forms of persecution, and basing this objection on the absolute innocence of honest error; which doctrine again he rested on the impossibility of ascertaining certainly religious truths, as demonstrated by the continuance of controversy. The following passages quoted by Beza are extremely remarkable for the age: ‘De controversiis nondum certo constat; sienim constaret disputari defuisset.’ ‘Nonne Deus eos amabit qui id quod verum esse putant defenderint bon fide? Etiam si forte erraverint, nonne eis veniam dabit?’ (Beza, pp. 65, 93.) Hallam has also exhumed three or four books or pamphlets that were written at the same time in favour of toleration. Acontius (Acanacio) seems to have been one of the most distinguished of these authors. Hallam says ( Hist, of Literature ) his book is, ‘perhaps, the first wherein the limitation of fundamental articles of Christianity to a small number is laid down at considerable length. He instances among doctrines which he does not reckon fundamental, those of the Real Presence and of the Trinity.’ Acontius was born at Trent. He adopted sceptical or indifferent opinions, verging on Socinianism; he took refuge in England, and received a pension from Elizabeth There is a full notice of him in an anonymous French history of Socinianism or very great research (1723), ascribed to Guichard or to Lamy (pp. 261–264) The hand of Socinus was suspected in some of these works. That of Bellius was by some ascribed to him. So, too, was a work now attributed to an author named Minos Celso, concerning whom scarcely anything is known, except that, like Socinus, he was born at Sienna. (See Biog. Univ., arts. Servitus and Celso. )
If this language should appear startling to any reader, I commend to his attention the following passage from an historian who was accustomed to weigh well his expressions: ‘At the end of the sixteenth century the simple proposition, that men for holding or declaring heterodox opinions in religion should not be burned alive or otherwise put to death, was itself little else than a sort of heterodoxy; and though many privately must have been persuaded of its truth, the Protestant churches were as far from acknowledging it as that of Rome. No one had yet pretended to assert the general right of religious worship, which, in fact, was rarely or never conceded to the Romanists in a Protestant country, though the Huguenots shed oceans of blood to secure the same privilege for themselves.’ (Hallam, Hist. of Literature , vol. i. p. 559.) The same judicious historian elsewhere says: ‘Persecution is the deadly original sin of the Reformed churches, that which cools every honest man's zeal for their cause in proportion as his reading becomes more extensive.’ ( Const. Hist . vol. i. ch. 2.)
‘La discipline de nos Réformés permet aussi le recours au bras séculier en certains cas, et on trouve parmi les articles de la discipline de l'Église de Genéve que les ministres doivent déférer au magistrat les incorrigibles qui méprisent les peines spirituelles, et en particulier ceux qui enseignent de nouveaux dogmes sans distinction. Et encore aujourd'hui celui de tous les auteurs Calvinistes qui reproche le plus aigrement à l'Église Romaine la cruauté de sa doctrine, en demeure d'accord dans le fond, puisqu'il permet l'exercice de la puissance du glaive dans les matières de la religion et de la conscience (Jurieu, Syst . ii. ch. 22, 23, &c.); chose aussi qui ne peut être révoquée en doute sans énerver et comme estropier la puissance publique; de sorte qu'il n'y a point d'Ilusion plus dangereuse que de donner la souffrance pour un caractère de la vraie Église, et je ne connois parmi les Chrétiens que les Sociniens et les Ana baptistes qui s'opposent à cette doctrine.’ ( Variations Protestantes , liv. x. c. 56.) The Anabaptists, however, were not always so tolerant, and one of the earliest rallying cries of the insurgents of Minister was: ‘Que tous non rebptisez fussent mis à mort comme payens et meschans.’ (Sleidan, liv. x.)
See, for a full development of this, ch. i.
1 Bayle, who was a great coward about his books, published this under the title ‘ Contrains-les d’ entrer, traduit de l’ Anglois du Sieur Jean Fox de Bruggs , par M. J. F.: à Cantorberry, chez Thomas Litwel.’
‘Sans exception il faut soumettre toutes les lois morales à cette idée saturelle d’ équité qui, aussi bien que la lumière métaphysique, illumine tout homme venant au monde.’ And therefore he concludes ‘que tout dogme particulier, soit qu'on l'avance comme contenu dans l'Ecriture, soit qu'on le propose autrement, est faux lorsqu'il est refuté par les notions claires et distinctes de la lumiére naturelle, principalement à l'égard de la morale.’ (ch. i.)
‘Tout homme aiant éprouvé qu'il est sujet à l'erreur, et qu'il voit ou croit voir en vieillissant la fausseté de plusieurs choses qu'il avoit cru veritables, doit être toujours disposé à écouter ceux qui lui offrent des instructions en matière même de religion. Je n'en excepte pas les Chrétiens; et je suis persuadé que s'il nous venoit une flotte de la terre Australe où il y eut des gens qui fissent connoitre qu'ils souhaitoient de conférer avec nous sur la nature de Dieu et sur le culte que l'homme lui doit, aiant appris que nous avons sur cela des erreurs damnables, nous ne ferions pas mal de les écouter, non seulement parceque ce seroit le moien de les désabuser des erreurs où nous croirions qu'ils seroient, mais aussi parceque nous pourrions profiter de leurs lumières, et que nous devons nous faire de Dieu une idée si vaste et si infinie que nous pouvons soupçonner qu'il augmentera nos connoissances à l'infini, et par des degrés et des manières dont la variété sera intime (Part i. c. 5.)
Grattan.
‘Ceux qui distinguent l'intolérance civile et l'intolérance théologique, se trompent à mon avis. Ces deux intolérances sont inséparables. II est impossible de vivre en paix avec des gens qu'on croit damnés; les aimer seroit hair Dieu qui les punit: il faut absolument qu'on les ramène ou qu'on les tourmente…. On doit tolérer tous les religions qui tolèrent les autres, autant que leur dogmes n'ont rien de contraire aux devoirs du citoyen; mais quiconque ose dire hors de l'Eglise point de salut, doit être chassé de l'état, à moins que l'état ne soit l'Eglise, et que le prince ne soit le pontife.’ ( Contrary Social , liv. iv. c. 8.)
Bull delivered at St. Maria Maggiore on the Feast of the Assumption, 1832. The whole bull is given by Lamennais, Affaires de Rome, pp. 318–357.
Areopagitica.
Religion of Protestants, p. 44 (ed. 1742).
A full description of them is given in Neal's History of the Puritans . In 1648 the Presbyterians tried to induce the Parliament to pass a law by which any one who persistently taught anything contrary to the main propositions comprised in the doctrines of the Trinity and the Incarnation should be punished with death, and all who taught Popish, Arminian, Antinomian, Baptist, or Quaker doctrines, should be imprisoned for life, unless they could find sureties that they would teach them no more. (Neal, vol. ii. pp 338–340.) The Scotch were unwearied in their efforts to suppress liberty of conscience, and in 1645 their Parliament addressed the English Parliament; ‘The Parliament of this kingdom is persuaded that the piety and wisdom of the honourable houses will never admit toleration of any sects or schisms contrary to our solemn league and covenant;’ and at the same time published a solemn ‘declaration against toleration of sectaries and liberty of conscience’ ( Ibid pp. 211–222) Among the notions started by the Anabaptists was that of a sleep of the soul between death and judgment, against which Calvin wrote a book with the barbarous title of Psychopannychia . This very harmless notion was one of those which, when obstinately persisted in, the Presbyterians of 1648 wished to punish with an indefinite period of imprisonment. (Neal, vol. li. p. 339)
‘Popery, Mahometanism, infidelity, and heathenism are the way to damnation; but liberty to preach up and to practise them is the means to make men Papists, Mahometans, Infidels, and Heathens; therefore this liberty is the way to men's damnation.’ ( Holy Commonwealth , 2d Preface.)
Political Aphorisms , 23, 24.
A System of Politics , ch. vi. Passages very similar occur in the Oceana , and, indeed, all through the writings of Harrington. The following is, I hink, a very remarkable instance of political prescience: ‘If it be said that in France there is liberty of conscience in part, it is also plain that while the hierarchy is standing this liberty is falling, and that if ever it comes to pull down the hierarchy, it pulls down that monarchy also. Wherefore the monarchy and hierarchy will be beforehand with it, if they see their true interest. ( System of Politics , ch. vi.)
Areopagitica.
‘Truth, indeed, came once into the world with her Divine Master, and was a perfect shape most glorious to look on; but when He ascended, and his Apostles after Him were laid asleep, then straight arose a wicked race of deceivers, who, as the story goes of the Egyptian Typhon with his conspirators, how they dealt with the good Osyris, took the virgin Truth, hewed her lovely form into a thousand pieces, and scattered them to the four winds. From that time ever since the sad friends of Truth, such as durst appear, imitating the careful search that Isis made for the mangled body of Osyris, went up and down gathering up limb and limb, still as they could find them. We have not yet found them all, Lords and Commons, nor ever shall do till her Master's second coming.’ ( Areopagitica. )
See his tract, Of true Religion, Heresy, Schism, Toleration , published in 1673. He does not, however, seem to have understood the Socinian heresy exactly as it is now understood.
‘As for tolerating the exercise of their (the Catholics’) religion, supposing their State activities not to be dangerous, I answer that toleration is either public or private, and the exercise of their religion as far as it is idolatrous can be tolerated neither way: not publicly, without grievous and unsufferable scandal given to all conscientious beholders; not privately, without great offence to God, declared against all kind of idolatry though secret. Ezech. viii. 7, 8, and verse 12, &c.; and it appears by the whole chapter, that God was no less offended with those secret idolatries than with those in public, and no less provoked than to bring on and hasten his judgments on the whole and for them also.’ ( Ibid. ) It is of course open to supposition, and not very improbable, that this passage, being written after the Restoration, when Catholicism had become a serious menace to the liberty of England, emanated rather from the politician than from the theologian.
Chillingworth published The Religion of Protestants in 1637, one year before he took orders—which last step he had many scruples about.
Sec. 22. He desires that they should be absolutely tolerated, unless, indeed, they openly preach such doctrines as the non-observance of faith with heretics, or that a pope can absolve subjects from the oath of allegiance, or that an heretical prince may be slain by his people.
On which Coleridge remarks, I think, a little too severely: ‘If Jeremy Taylor had not in effect retracted after the Restoration, if he had not, as soon as the Church had gained power, most basely disclaimed and disavowed the principle of toleration, and apologised for the publication by declaring it to have been a ruse de guerre, currying pardon for his past liberalism by charging, and most probably slandering, himself with the guilt of falsehood, treachery, and hypocrisy, his character as a man would have been almost stainless’ ( Notes on English Divines, vol. i. p. 209.)
E. g. in Quakerism—that strange form of distorted rationalism, which, while proclaiming doctrines absolutely subversive of national independence, and indulging in extravagances almost worthy of Bedlam, maintained in the most unequivocal language the absolute inefficiency of mere religious ceremonies, the possibility of salvation in any Church, and the injustice of every form of persecution.
His opponent was Archdeacon Proast, whose pamphlets were printed in the University.
Annuaire des Deux Mondes, 1858, p. 463. In the previous year an attempt had been made by the Government to moderate the fierce intolerance of the Swedish law; but the bill, though adopted by the Houses of the Middle Class and of the Peasants, was rejected by those of the Nobles and of the Clergy. A slight—unfortunately very slight—modification was effected in 1860.
Cebes.
This very painful recurrence, which occupies such an important place in all religious biographies, seems to be attached to an extremely remarkable and abscure department of mental phenomena, which has only been investigated with earnestness within the last few years, and which is termed by psychologists ‘latent consciousness,’ and by physiologists ‘unconscious cerebration’ or the ‘reflex action of the brain.’ That certain facts remain so hidden in the mind, that it is only by a strong act of volition they can be recalled to recollection, is a fact of daily experience; but it is now fully established that a multitude of events which are so competely forgotten that no effort of will can revive them, and that their statement calls up no reminiscence, may nevertheless be, so to speak, imbedded in the memory, and may be reproduced with intense vividness under certain physical conditions. This is especially the result of some diseases Thus, e. g., there is a case on record of an ignorant woman repeating, in a delirium, certain words which were recognised as Hebrew and Chaldaic. When she returned to consciousness she knew nothing of these words, she had no notion of their meaning; and being told that they were Hebrew and Chaldaic, she could recollect no possible way in which she could have acquired them. A searching investigation into her antecedents was instituted; and it was found that when a girl she had been servant to a clergyman who was accustomed to walk up and down his passage reading those languages. The words were hidden in the mind, were reproduced by disease, and were forgotten when the disease had passed. (Carpenter, Human Physiology, p 808.) It is said that a momentary review of numbers of long-forgotten incidents of life is the last phenomenon of consciousness before the insensibility that precedes drowning. But not only are facts retained in the memory of which we are unconscious, the mind itself is also perpetually acting—pursuing trains of thought automatically, of which we have no consciousness. Thus it has been often observed, that a subject which at night appears tangled and confused, acquires a perfect clearness and arrangement during sleep. Thus the schoolboy knows that verses learnt by heart just before sleep are retained with much greater facility than those which are learnt at any other time. Thus, in the course of recollection, two facts will often rise in succession which appear to have no connection whatever; but a careful investigation will prove that there is some forgotten link of association which the mind had pursued, but of which we were entirely unconscious. It is in connection with these facts that we should view that reappearance of opinions, modes of thought, and emotions belonging to a former stage of our intellectual history, that is often the result of the automatical action of the mind when volition is altogether suspended. It is especially common (or, at least, especially manifest) in languor, in disease, and, above all, in sleep. M. Maury, who has investigated the subject with his usual great ability, has shown that in sleep hyperæsthesia of the memory is very common; that not only facts, but processes of thought that belong altogether to the past, are reproduced; and that a frequent dreamer will often be brought under the influence of vices in which he had once indulged, but by which in his waking hours he is rarely or never overcome. There can be little doubt that when we are actively reasoning this automatic action of the mind still continues, but the ideas and trains of thought that are thus produced are so combined and transformed by the reason, that we are unconscious of their existence. They exist nevertheless, and form (or greatly contribute to) our mental bias. It is impossible to review this most suggestive subject without suspecting that the saying, ‘habit is a second nature,’ represents more than a metaphor; that the reason is much more closely connected with the will than is generally imagined; and that the origin of most of those opinions we attribute to pure reasoning, is more composite than we suppose. This important subject was first incidentally pointed out by Leibnitz. After his time it seems, except in as far as it was connected with the animism of Stahl, to have been almost unnoticed till very recently. Sir W. Hamilton (in his Essays ) has treated it from a psychological, and Drs. Laycock ( The Brain and the Mind ) and Carpenter ( Human Physiology, pp. 799–819) from a medical, point of view. Mr. Morell, following in the steps of Stahl, has availed himself of it ( Mental Philosophy ) to explain the laws of generation, ascribing the formation of the fœtus to the unconscious action of the soul; and M. Maury ( Le Sommeil et les Réves ) has shown its connection with the phenomena of sleep. See, too, Tissot, Sur la Vie and Saisset, L'Ame et la Vie.
It is worthy of notice, that the first development of sculpture, which in almost all other nations was religious, in Rome appears to have been patriotic—the objects of representation being not the gods, but the true national ideals, the heroes of Rome. (See O. Muller, Manuel d'Archéologie, vol. i pp. 251, 252.)
It was confirmed as part of the general law of the Church by Alexander III. in 1179. See Ducellier, Hist. des Classes Laborieuses en Frances, pp. 87–89, 127, 128.
Mably Observatiors sur l'Historic de France, liv. iv. c. v.
Avis aux Refujiez, p. 56 (ed. 1692).
E. g. the recent invasion of Morocco by the Spaniards. On the religions character Louis XIV. tried to give the invasion of Holland, see Michelet, Louis XIV.
The relations of the Inquisition and the civil power have been admirably sketched by Sarpi in a short work called Discorso dell’ Offizis dell Inquisizione, which I have closely followed.
Sarpi, pp. 48–57 (ed. 1639).
This curious episode has been lately investigated by M. Mignet in an interesting work called Antonio Perez. One of the accusations brought against Perez was, that he had in a moment of passion exclaimed, that’ if God the Father had ventured to say to him what the King had said, he would have cut his nose off,’ which the Inquisitors said ‘partook of the heresy of the Anthro pomorphites and of the Vaudois, who maintain that the Father has bodily parts.’
Paramo, De Origine Inquisitionis , pp. 224–226. This was perhaps one cause of the decline of the Spanish navy.
The Inquisition was not, it is true, organised till after his death, but St. Dominick was the chief reviver of persecution. His Order represented the principle, and the Inquisition was, almos as a matter of course, placed mainly in its hands.
The following passage from Sarpi is very instructive:—‘Altre volte lisanti Vescovi niuna cosa piu predicavano e raccommandavano a prencipi che la cura della religione. Di niuna cosa piu li ammonivano e modestamente reprendevano che del trascurarla: ed adesso niuna cosa piu se predica e persude al prencipe, se non ch’ a lui non s’ aspetta la cura delle cose divine, con lutta che del contrario la scrittura sacra sia piena di luoghi dove la religione è raccommandata alla protezione del prencipe della Maestà Divina.’ (Pp. 89, 90.)
See, for example, the full discussion of the matter in Carena, De Officio S. Inquisitionis (Lugduni, 1649), pp. 135–161. Three popes—Paul IV., Pius, IV., and Gregory XV.—found it necessary to issue bulls on the subject, a fact which will surprise no one who has glanced over the pages of Sanchez or Dens.
This appears sufficiently from the seasons in which executions took place, and from all the descriptions of them. I may notice, however, that there is in existence one very remarkable contemporary painting of the scene. It represents the execution, or rather the procession to the stake, of a number of Jews and Jewesses who were burnt in 1680 at Madrid, during the fétes that followed the marriage of Charles II., and before the king, his bride, the court, and clergy of Madrid. The great square was arranged like a theatre, and thronged with ladies in court dress; the king sat on an elevated platform surrounded by the chief members of the aristocracy, and Bishop Valdares, the Inquisitor-General, presided over the scene. The painter of this very remarkable picture (which is in the gallery of Madrid) was Francesco Rizzi, who died in 1685. He has directed the sympathies of the spectator against the Jews by the usual plan of exaggerating the Jewish nose—a device which is common to all early painters except Juanes, who, in his pictures of New Testament scenes, honestly gives this peculiarity of feature to the good as well as the bad characters, and who, as an impartial distributor of noses, is deserving of the very highest respect. Llorente has noticed this auto da fé , but not the picture. ( Hist. de l'Inquisition , tom. iii. pp. 3, 4.)
Among the victims in 1680 was a Jewish girl, not 17, whose wondrous beauty struck all who saw her with admiration. As she passed to the stake, she cried to the queen, ‘Great queen, is not your presence able to bring me some comfort under my misery? Consider my youth, and that I am condemned for a religion which I have sucked in with my mother's milk.’ The queen turned away her eyes. (Limborch, Hist. Inquis . cap. xl.)
Sarpi, p. 60. Gregory IX. made the admission of the Inquisition an mdispensable condition of his alliances with the free towns. A monk called Friar John, of Vicenza, seems to have been the most successful in promoting the institution in Italy. He pronounced himself the apostle not of persecution, but of peace, reconciled many enemies, and burnt sixty Cathari on a single occasion in the great square of Verona. (Sismondi, Hist de la Liberté, tom. i. pp. 108, 109.)
Sarpi, p. 80. Llorente, Hist. de la Inquistion, tom ii. p. 272. This tendency of the Italian mind accounts for the small amount of blood shed at Rome by the Inquisition. I cannot, indeed, remember more than four instances of men having been burnt alive there—the pantheistic philosopher Bruno: a brother of Du Chesne, the historian of the persecutions in the Netherlands; a heretic who is spoken of by Scaliger; and the famous Arnold of Brescia, who was burnt on the pretext of ‘political heresies.’
Julian did not, as is sometimes said, forbid the Christians studying the classic writings, but he prohibited them from teaching them on the ground that it was absurd for those who despised and repudiated the ancient gods to expound the records of their acts. See his Epistle to Jamblichus.
Sarpi, pp. 192, 193. Milton gives a slight sketch of the history of censorships in his Areopagtica.
Giannone, Ist. di Napoli.
Sleidan, liv. ii.
For a clear view of the successive stages of the secularising movement in France, see the memorial on the subject drawn up by the Abbé Lacordaire, and reproduced by Lamennais. (Affaires de Rome, pp. 37–89.)
I may here notice that an Irishman and an ecclesiastic—Bishop Berkeley—was, as far as I know, the first Protestant who suggested the admission of Catholics into a Protestant university. He proposed that they should be admitted into that of Dublin without being compelled to attend chapel or any divinity lectures; and he observed that the Jesuits, in their colleges in Paris, ha I acted in this manner towards Protestants. ( Querist, No. 291, published in 1735.) As early as 1725 a considerable amount of controversy took place on the subject of toleration in Ireland, occasioned by a sermon preached before the Irish Parliament by a clergyman named Synge, in which he advocated as a Christian duty the most complete toleration of the Catholics, and enunciated the principles of religious liberty with the strongest emphasis. The Parliament ordered the sermon to be published. It was answered by a writer named Radcliffe, and defended by a writer named Weaver. Synge himself rejoined. This whole controversy, which is utterly forgotten—buried in the great chaos of Irish pamphlets, and perhaps read of late years by no human being except the present writer—is well worthy of the attention of those who study the course of public opinion in Ireland. Perhaps the most eloquent defence of toleration written in English during the last century, was the answer of the Irish priest O'Leary to Wesley's Defence of the Penal Laws; but then O'Leary was defending his own cause.
I have examined all this more fully in The Leaders of Public Opinion is Ireland.
See, on this subject, a striking letter by Southey, in Blanco White's Life, vol. i. p. 310.
Joyce, Hist. of English Convocations, p. 449.
Buckle, Hist of Civ., vol. i. pp. 380, 381.
Ibid.
This has been very clearly noticed in one of the ablest modern books in defence of the Tory theory. ‘At the point where Protestantism becomes vicious, where it receives the first tinge of latitudinarianism, and begins to join hands with infidelity by superseding the belief of an objective truth in religion, necessary for salvation; at that very spot it likewise assumes an aspect of hostility to the union of Church and State.’ (Gladstone, on Church and State, p. 188.)
The evidence of the secularisation of politics furnished by the position of what is called ‘the religious press,’ is not confined to England and France. The following very remarkably passage was written by a most competent server in 1858, when Austria seemed the centre of religious despotism: ‘Tous les intérêts les plus chétifs ont des nombreux organes dans la presse périodique et font tous de bonnes affaires. La religion, le premier et le plus grand de tous les intérêts, n'en a qu'un nombre presque imperceptible et qui a bien de la peine à vivre. Dans la Catholique Autriche sur 135 journaux il n'y a qu'um seul consacré aux intérêts du Christianisme, et il laisse beaucoup à désirer sousle rapport de l'orthodoxie…. La vérité est que décidément l'opinion publique ainsi que l'intérêt publique ont cessé d'être Chrétiens en Europe.’ (Ventura, Le Pouvoir Chrétien Politique, p. 139.)
See Grotius, De Jure Belli et Pacis, lib. i. cap. 4; Taylor, Ductor Dubtantium, lib. iii. cap. 3, and also the list of authorities cited by Gregory XVL in his bull to the Bishops of Poland, ‘concerning the maxims of the Catholic Church on submission to the civil power’; Lamennais, Affaircs de Rome, pp 308–317. But perhaps the fullest exposition of the Patristic sentiments on the subject is in a very able book called Sacro-Sancta Regum Majestas, published at Oxford at the beginning of the Great Rebellion.
Striking instances of this are given by Grotius, De Jure, lib. i. c. iv. § 7.
This has been maintained among others by Milton and Gronovius among the l'rotestants, and by Bellarmine and (m more modern times) by Bianchi among the Catholics. See Bianchi, Traité de la Puissance Ecclésiastique (trad. Peltier, Paris, 1857), tom. i. pp. 639–642.
This appears to have been a favourite argument of the French Prosestants: Avis aux Refugiez sur ‘eur prochain Retour en France, p. 43. To these the Gallican Catholics replied that Julian was dead when the invectives were delivered. Hilary, however, inveighed vehemently against the Arian Emperor Constantius, in the lifetime of the latter; and Bianchi, in a very ingenious fashion, argues from this that Constantius must have been virtually deposed on account of his heresy, for respect to lawful sovereigns is among the plainest duties; and as St. Hilary called Constantius ‘a precursor of Antichrist,’ ‘a rascal,’ and ‘an object of malediction,’ &c., &c., it may be inferred that he did not regard him as his lawful sovereign. (Puissance Eccl., tom, i pp. 651, 652.)
A clear secular view of the subject is given by Mr Hallam, in the chapter on the ‘Increase of Ecclesiastical Authority,’ in his Hist. of the Middle Ages. It has also been examined very fully by Bossuet, from a Gallican point of view, in his Defence of the Articles of the Gallican Church, and from an Ultramontane point of view by Bianchi, On Ecclesiastical Power. This last book, which is a work of exceedingly extensive learning, but of undisguised and indeed dishonest partiality, was published originally in Italian in 1745, and directed especially against the opinions of Giannone. The French translation was made in 1857, and consists of two (in every sense of the word) most ponderous volumes. It is now the great standard work of the Ultramontane party.
As one of the leading supporters of the Papal party put it with amusing coolness: ‘Certe licet Paulus dixerit “omnis anima potestatibus sublimioribus subdita sit” nunquam addidit, etiam potestatibus excommunicatis vel deprivatis a papa.’ (Suarez, De Fide, lib. vi. cap. 4.)
Bianchi, Puissance Ecclésiastique, tom. i. pp. 550–571. Louis le Débou naire seems to have been deposed in this way.
‘Principibus sæcularibus in tantum homo obedire tenetur in quantum ordo justitiæ requirit. Et ideo si non habeant justum principatum sed usurpatum vel si injusta præcipiant, non tenentur eis subditi obedire, nisi forte per accidens propter vitandum scandalum vel periculum.’ (Summa, Pars II. Quæst. civ. art. 6.)
Bossuet simply remarks that for some centuries after St. Thomas the schoolmen seem to have been nearly unanimous on this point, but that it is manifest that they were mistaken! (See Bianchi, tom. i. pp. 135, 136.) The writer among the schoolmen who was most favourable to liberty was the Englishman William of Ockham. (Milman, Hist. of Latin Christianity, vol vi. pp. 470–474.)
Suarez, De, Fide, lib. iii. cap. 2; Bianchi, ch. i. These theologians of course endeavour to trace back their distinction to the origin of Christianity, but its formal definition and systematic enforcement are due mainly to the schoolmen.
The political influence of the Italian republics upon English public opinion was very powerful in the seventeenth century, when the habit of travelling became general among the upper class of Englishmen, and when a large proportion of the highest intellects acquired in Italy a knowledge of the Italian writers on government, and an admiration for the Italian constitutions, and especially for that of Venice. The highest representative of this action of the Italian upon the English intellect was Harrington. His Oceana, though published under the Commonwealth and dedicated to Cromwell, was altogether uninfluenced by the inspiration of Puritanism; and it was only by the intercession of Cromwell's favourite daughter, Lady Claypole, that its publication was permitted. (Toland, Life of Harrington.) It is remarkable that while Harrington's writings were avowedly based in a very great degree upon those of Italians, they also represent more faithfully than any others of the seven teenth century what are regarded as the distinctive merits of English liberty. That a good government is an organism, not a mechanism—in other words, that it must grow naturally out of the condition of society, and cannot be imposed by theorists—that representative assemblies with full powers are the sole efficient guardians of liberty—that liberty of conscience must be allied with political liberty—that a certain balance should be preserved between the different powers of the State, and that property produces empire, are among the main propositions on which Harrington insists; and most of them are even now the main points of difference between English liberty and that which emanates from a French source. Harrington was also a warm advocate of the ballot. He was answered by Ferne, Bishop of Chester, in a book called Pian-Piano; by Matthew Wren, son of the Bishop of Ely; and in the Holy Commonwealth of Baxter.
Suarez, De Fide, lib. iii. cap. 2. This book of Suarez was written in reply to one by James I. of England.
He savs that ‘Potestatem hanc deponendi regem esse posse vel in ipsa republica vel in Summo Pontifice, diverso tamen modo. Nam in republica solum per modum defensionis necessariæ ad conservationem suam, … tum ex vi juris naturalis quo licet vim vi repellere, tum quia semper hic casus ad propriam reipublicæ conservationem necessarius, intelligitur exceptus in primo illo fœdere quo respublica potestatem suam in regem transtulit…. At vero in Summo Pontifice est hæc potestas tanquam in superiori habents jurisdictionem ad corripiendum reges’ ( De Fide, lib. vi. cap. iv.)
‘Ergo quando respublica juste potest regem deponere, recte faciunt ministri ejus regem cogendo vel interficiendo si sit necesse.’ (Ibid.) Suarez adds, however, that before pronouncing a sentence of deposition against the sovereign, it is at least advisable and becoming (though not absolutely necessary) for the nation to apply to the Pope for his sanction. This notion has been developed at length by De Maistre, Le Pape.
Statim per hæresim rex ipso facto privatur aliquo modo domimo et proprietate sui regni, quia vel confiscatum manet vel ad legitimum successoren Oatholicum ipso jure transit, et nihilominus non potest statim regno privari, sed juste illud possidet et administrat donec per sententiam saltem declars toriam criminie condemnetur.’ (Lib. vi. cap iv.)
Bianchi has collected a striking chain of passages in defence of this proposition (tom. i. pp. 145–147).
‘Si Papa regem deponat, b illis tantum poterit expelli vel interfici quibus lpse id commiserit.’ ( De Fide, lib. vi. c. iv.)
It is signed by Stephanus Hojeda, Visitor of the Jesuits in the province of Toledo.
De Rege a Regis Institutione, pp. 55–65. (1st ed.)
De Rege et Regis Institutione, p. 62.
Ibid. lib. i. ch. vi. ‘An tyrannum opprimere fas sit?’
P. 69. Mr. Hallam observes that the words ‘æternum Galliæ decus’ were omitted in the later editions, which, however, in other respects scarcely diflered from the first. ( Hist. of Lit. )
P. 72.
‘Certe a republica unde ortum habet regia potestas, rebus exigentibus Regem in jus vocari posse et si sanitatem respuat principatu spoliari. Neque ita in principem jura potestatis transtulit ut non sibi majorem reservarit potestatem…. Populis volentibus tributa nova imperantur, leges constituuntur; et quod est amplius populi sacramento jura imperandi quanivis hæreditaria successori confirmantur’ (pp. 72, 73). Very remarkable words to have been written by a Spaniard and a priest nearly a century before Locke.
‘Et est communis sensus quasi quædam naturae vox mentibus nostris Irdita, auribus insonans lex, qua a turpi honestum secernimus.’ (p. 74.)
Pp. 72–74.
‘In eo consentire tum thilosophos tum theologos video eum principem qui vi et armis rempublicam occupavit nullo præterea jure, nullo publico civiuncor sensu, perimi a quocumque, vita et principatu spoliari posse.’ (pp. 74, 75.) A few lines lower comes the eulogy of Ehud. The ‘consenting theologians’ are not cited—and, indeed, Mariana scarcely ever quotes an ecclesiastical authority—but the reader may find a great many given in Suarez ( De File, lib. vi. cap. iv.). St. Thomas justified Ehud on this general ground, and in this point seems to have differed little or not at all from Mariana.
‘Si medicinam respuat princeps, neque spes ulla sanitatis relinquatur, sententia pronunciata licebit reipublicæ ejus imperium detrectare primum, et quoniam bellum necessario concitabitur ejus defendendi consilia explicare…. Et si res feret neque aliter se respublica tueri possit, eodem defensionis jure as vero potiore auctoritate et propria, principem publicum hostem declaratum ferro perimere. Eademque facultas est cuicumque privato, qui spe imppunitatis abjecta, neglecta salute, in conatum juvandi rempublicam ingredi voluerit.’ (p. 76.)
Pp. 77, 78.
1 ‘Qui votis publicis favens eum perimere tentarit, haudquaquam inquecum fecisse existimabo.’ (p. 77.)
P. 83.
‘Nos tamen non quid facturi sint homines sed quid per naturæ leges concessum sit despicimus…. Et est naturæ vox corumunis hominum sensus vituperantium si quis in alios quantumvis hostes veneno grassetur.’ (pp 83–85.) It is said that Mariana, in his History, has treated kings with considerable deference; but his anti-monarchical opinions appear very strongly in a short work called ‘Discourse on the Defects of the Government of the Jesuits,’ which contains—what is extremely rare in the writings of the members of the order—a bitter attack on the general, and a fierce denunciation of the despotic principles on which the society is constituted. The following (which I quote from a French translation of 1625) is very characteristic:—‘Selon mon opinion la monarchie nous met par terre, non pour estre monarchie ains pour n'estre bien tempérée. C'est un furieux sanglier qui ravage tout par où il passe, et si on ne l'arreste tout court, nous ne devons espérer de repos.’ (ch. x.)
He is called so in, I think, every history of the occurrence I have met with; but a writer in the Journal des Savins of 1748 maintains (pp. 994– 996) that there is some doubt upon the point. It is worthy of remark that the duke who instigated the murder, and probably inspired the apology, died himself by the hand of an assassin. (Van Bruyssel, Hist. du Commerce Belge, tom. ii. pp. 48, 49.)
Mariana rejects this decree without hesitation, on Ultramontane principles, as not having been confirmed by the Pope ( De Rege, p. 79). Suarez seems to think it binding, but argues ( De Fide, lib. vi. c. 4) that it applies only to tyrants in regimine, because the Council condemns the opinion that ‘subjects’ may slay a tyrant, and a tyrant in titulo has, properly speaking, no ‘subjects.’
There is a full notice of this play in Charles, La Comédie en France au Seizième Siècle.
Sa was a Portuguese—the other two were Spaniards. The prominence this doctrine acquired in Spain in the reign of Philip II. is probably in part lue to the coutest of Spain with Elizabeth, who was regarded as a tyrant both in titulo and in regimine, and consequently naturally marked out for assassination. Mariana's book was probably written under Philip II., for the royal privilege to print it was granted only three months after the death of that king.
‘Adverte duplicem esse tyrannum unum potestate et dominio qui non habet titulum verum, sed tyrannice occupat rempublicain: et hunc licet occi dere, dum aliter non potest liberari respublica et dum spes est libertatis probabilis; aliter non licet privato cuilibet occidere Alterum administrationi qui habet quidem verum titulum sed tyrannice tractat subditos, et hunc non licet absque publica auctoritate occidere.’ ( Summa Casuum Conscientiœ, lib. v. c. vi. p. 653.)
‘Tyrannice gubernans juste acquisitum dominium non potest spoliari sine publico judicio; lata vero sententia potest quisque fieri executor: potest autem deponi a populo etiam qui juravit ei obedientiam perpetuam si monitus non vult corrigi. At occupantem tyrannice potestatem quisque de populo potest occidere si aliud non sit remedium est enim publicus hostis.’ ( Aphorism. Con fessariorum, verb. Tyrannus. )
‘Tyrannum primo modo nefas est privatis interficere; possit tamen respublica quoad capita convenire, eique resistere, lataque sententia deponere ab administratione atque illum depositum punire. Secundo modo tyrannum quivis de republica potest licite eum interficere.’ ( Comment. Pars IV. tract. iii disp. 6.)
‘Tyrannum qui per vim et illegitime principatum occupavit, si tyrannis aliter tolli non possit, occidere cuilibet licitum sit.’ ( De Jure et Officiis bellicis, lib. i.)
In a book called Tyrannicidium, seu Scitum Catholicorum de Tyranni Internecione. This book (which was written in reply to a Calvinistic attack) contains a great deal of information about the early literature of tyrannicide. It bears the approbation of Busæus, the head of the Jesuits in Northern Germany.
De Thou, liv. xcvi. The Pope was Sixtus V.
Lamennais, Affaires de Rome. Since the days of Lamennais the names of Ravignan and Félix have done much to rescue the order from the reproach.
See Suarez, De Fide, lib. vi. cap. iv.
On the inevitable tendency of the doctrine of deposition to tyrannicide there are some good remarks in Bossuet, Defensio, lib. i. c. 3. The doctrine of tyrannicide among the Jesuits seems to have died away after Suarez: the political condition of Europe no longer made it of great service to the Church, and the controversies of Jansenism diverted the energy of the Jesuits into new channels. Pascal, in his Provincial Letters, barely touches this aspect of the Jesuit teaching.
See on the one side Bianchi, Puissance Souveraine, and on the other the Defensio of Bossuet.
According to Bianchi, the first Catholic who maintained that the Pope had no power over the temporal possessions of princes who fell into heresy was an Englishman of the time of James I.—William Barclay, the father of the author of the Argenis. W. Barclay wrote against and was answered by Bellarmine. (Bianchi, tom. ii. pp. 768, 769)
Bianchi, tom. i. pp. 96–104.
Defensio, lib. i. c. 15, 16. Avertissements sur les Lettres de M. Jurieu, no. 5.
Hallam. Hist. of Lit
Barrington On the Statutes , p 280.
See, however, some rather strong passages quoted by Kellerus, Tyrannecidium , pp. 73, 74.
See Buckle's Hist, of Scottish Civilisation.
‘And therfor I fear not to affirm that it had bene the dutie of the nobil itie, judges, rulers, and people of England, not only to have resisted and again standed Marie, that Jesabel whome they call their queen, but also to have punished her to the death, with all the sort of her idolatrous preestes, together with all such as should have assisted her what tyme that shee and they openly began to suppresse Christes Evangil, to shed the blood of the saincts of God, and to erect that most devillish idolatrie, the Papistical abominations.’ (Knox, Appellation. )
As Buchanan tersely puts it, ‘Rex, lex loquens; lex, rex mutus.’
Camden, Annal ., pars ii. (ad ann. 1571).
It is worthy of remark, as showing their persistence, that probably the ablest modern advocate of what may be termed the Biblical aspect of liberty was Robert Hall.
As Macaulay very truly and very eloquently wrote, ‘The Church of England continued to be for more than 150 years the servile handmaid of monarchy, the steady enemy of public liberty. The divine right of kings and the duty of passively obeying all their commands were her favourite tenets. She held those tenets firmly through times of oppression, persecution, and licentiousness, while law was trampled down, while judgment was perverted, while the people were eaten as though they were bread. Once, and but once—for a moment, and but for a moment—when her own dignity and property were touched, she forgot to practise the submission she had taught.’ ( Essays , vol. i. p. 60, ed. 1861.) Hallam, however, has disinterred a curious book called A Short Treatise of Politique Power , published by Poynet, Protestant Bishop of Winchester, in 1558, advocating the most seditious doctrines, and among others tyrannicide. But the explanation is simple: Poynet wrote during the persecution of Mary. ( Hist. of Lit. , vol. ii. pp. 37–40.)
‘Eternal damnation is prepared for all impenitent rebels in hell with Satan the first founder of rebellion.’ ‘Heaven is the place of good obedient subjects, and hell the prison and dungeon of rebels against God and their prince. (Homily on Wilful Rebellion. )
Homilies or Wilful Rebellion and on Obedience. The same doctrines were laid down in the Canons of Convocation in 1606, and by the University of Oxford in 1622, when censuring a preacher named Knight, who had said that subjects oppressed on account of religion might sometimes resist. (Hal lam, Const. Hist. , vol. i. p. 415.)
Ductor Dubitantium , lib. iii. cap. iii. Ussher, who was perhaps still more competent than Taylor to express the sentiments of the Fathers, was at least equally emphatic. See Elrington's Life of Ussher , vol. i. p. 239. Berkeley made an ingenious attempt to show that passive obedience was ordained by the law of nature: see his Discourse on Passive Obedience.
In the clause that it was not lawful ‘on any pretence whatever to take our arms against the king.’ This clause was expunged at the Revolution (Allen's Hist. of Royal Prerogative in England , p. 89). Magna Charta had declared that kings who violated it might be resisted.
This decree is given in full in Wodrow's Hist. of Church of Scotland , vol. iii. p. 506. See on this whole subject, Hallam, Const. Hist. , vol ii. pp. 459–465 (ed. 1854).
Eccl. Pol. , lib. i. sec. 10.
‘The lawful power of making laws to command whole political societies of men belonging so properly unto the same entire societies, that for any prince or potentate, of what kind soever, upon earth to exercise the same of himself and not by express commission immediately and personally received from God, or else from authority derived at the first from their consent upon whose persons they impose laws, it is no better than mere tyranny. Laws they are not therefore which public approbation hath not made so.’ ( Eccl Pol. , lib. sec. 10.)
Eccl. Pol. , b. viii. ch. ii. At a later period Burnet threw himself into the liberal movement as cordially as Locke, but he was almost isolated in the Church.
This change is clearly shown in Sidney.
Bossuet maintained this, remarking that ‘Abimelech,’ which was a name originally common to all the kings of Palestine, signifies, ‘My father king.’ ( Defensio , lib. i. c. 3.) In England the patriarchal theory of government seems to have become especially popular under James I (see Hallam's Hist of Lit , vol. iii. p. 439, ed. 1854), but there are many traces of it at an earlier period. Thus in the Institution of a Christian Man (1537), and in The Necessary Doctrine and Erudition for any Christian Man (1543), passive obedience is unequivocally enforced as a deduction from the Fifth Commandment. ‘I die,’ said Lord Capel on the scaffold, in 1649, ‘for keeping the Fifth Commandment, given by God himself, and written with His own finger. It commands obedience to parents; and all divines, differ as they will on other points, agree in this, and acknowledge that it includes the magistrate’ (Marsden, History of the Later Puritans, from 1642 to 1662, p. 320). Milton, on the other hand, said: ‘Pater et rex diversissima sunt. Pater nos genuit; at non rex nos sed nos regem creavimus. Patrem natura dedit populo, regem ipse populus dedit sibi; non ergo propter regem populus, sed propter populum rex est.’ ( Defensio Pop. Ang., cap. 1.)
As Locke says, ‘I should not speak so plainly of a gentleman long since past answering (Sir R. Filmer), had not the pulpit of late years publicly owned his doctrine, and made it the current divinity of the times.’ (Preface to Treatise on Government. )
‘The end of government being the good of the community, whatever alterations are made in it tending to that end cannot be an encroachment upon anybody, since nobody in government can have any right tending to any other end.’ ( On Government , c. xiv.)
Ibid. , c. xviii.
‘If any one shall claim a power to lay or levy taxes on the people without their consent, he thereby invades the fundamental law of property, and subverts the end of government.’ ( Ibid. , ch. xi.)
‘The legislature cannot transfer the power of making laws, for, it being but a delegated power from the people, they who have it cannot pass it over to others.’ ( Ibid. ) This doctrine was very justly regarded by Grattan and Plunket as decisive against the constitutional character of the Act of Union between England and Ireland.
Ibid.
The passages from Scripture which the Anglican divines cited as their political rules would seem to imply that allegiance should always be rendered to the sovereign de facto. This doctrine, however, was at the Revolution generally and indignantly repudiated by the clergy, who maintained that while King James held his court at St. Germains he alone was entitled to their allegiance. However, after the Revolution, Sancroft published a work called Bishop Overall's Convocation Book , which had been approved by both Houses of Convocation at the beginning of the reign of James I. This work (which had not before been published) asserted in the strongest terms the doctrine of passive obedience, based it on the patriarchal theory of government, and declared that in case of a change of government being effected by unrighteous means, allegiance should be transferred to the new power when it was ‘thoroughly settled.’ Thereupon Sherlock declared that he considered himself bound by the voice of the Church to take the oaths of allegiance to the government of William (which, to the world at large, seemed very far indeed from ‘thoroughly settled’), and he accordingly accepted the deanery of St. Paul's. The explosion that followed is admirably described by Macaulay (ch. xvii.). It is evident that the doubt hanging over this part of the theory of the Anglican divines, was favourable to liberty—in the first place by weakening the logical force of that theory, and in the second place by giving those who shrunk from absolutely rejecting it a pretext for joining the new government.
Among the less eminent freethinkers there were, indeed, some exceptions to this tendency. Thus Tindal wrote a tract against Passive Obedience in 1694, a defence of Toleration in 1697, and a defence of a Free Press in 1698. Toland too wrote, in 1702, a somewhat remarkable book called Anglica Libera , in which he advocated very eloquently the political principles of Locke, denounced strongly the doctrine of Hobbes that a sovereign has a right to dictate the religion of his subjects, and maintained that ‘the success of the Protestant religion, politically speaking, depends on the liberty of the several States of Europe’ (p. 185). Toland also edited the Oceana , and wrote the Lives of Harrington and Milton. But the most eminent avowed English freethinkers of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries are those mentioned in the text, with the exception of Gibbon, who sat in Parliament as a Tory.
Many instances of this are collected by Bianchi (tom. i. pp. 46–84), but the fullest account I have met with is in a very clever anonymous book (writter from a strong Catholic point of view, and ascribed by some to an author named Pellison, and by others to Bayle), called Avis aux Refugiez sur leur prochain retour en France , par M. C. L. A. A. P. D. P. The condemnation of the book of Suarez was by a Synod of Tonneins, in 1614. On the other hand, on the extremely liberal views of Jurieu, who preceded both Sidney and Locke, see Michelet, Hist. de Louis XIV. , pp. 431–436. The book in which Jurieu especially expressed them is his Soupirs de la France Esclave.
Avis aux Refugez , pp. 64, 65 (ed. 1692)
Michelet, Hist. de Louis XIV. (1860), p. 432.
The works of Hotman were collected in three large volumes, in 1600. After the Franco-Gallia the best known are the Brutum Fulmen , which was written on the occasion of the excommunication of the King of Navarre and the Antitribonius , which was written in opposition to the revival of Roman legislation. Joseph Scaliger said he helped in the composition of the Franco-Gallia ( Scaligerana , art. Hottomannus ).
Franco-Gallia , lib. i. c. 9.
Lib. i. c. 24. So Knox: ‘To promote a woman to beare rule is repugnant to nature, contumelie to God, a thing most contrarious to his reveled will and approved ordinance; and finallie it is the subversion of good order of all equitie and justice.’ ( Monstrous Regiment of Women. )
Quœst. ii.
Vindiciœ contra Tyrannos, p. 45 (ed. 1610).
Vindioiœ, pp. 38–39, 60.
P. 45.
Vindiciœ, p. 60.
P. 79.
‘Voyez l'horrible impudence de quoi nous pelotons les raisons divines, et combien irreligieusement nous les avons rejettées et reprises selon que la fortune nous a changez de place en ces orages publics. Cette proposition si solennelle, s'il est permis au sujet de se rebeller et armer contre son prince pour la défense de la religion, souvienne-vous en quelles bouches cette année passée l'affirmative d'icelle étoit l'arcboutant d'un parti, la négative de quel autre parti c'étoit l'arcboutant, et oyez à présent de quelle quartier vient la voix et instruction de l'une et de l'autre si les armes bruyent moms pour cetts cause que pour celle-là.’—Montaigne, Essais, liv. ii. c. 12.
This tendency of the classical writings elicited a burst of extreme indignation from Hobbes: ‘Inter rebellionis causas maximas numerari potest librorum politicorum et historicorum quos scripserunt veteres Grci et Romani lectio…. Mihi ergo monarchiis nihil videtur esse damnosius posse, quam permittere ut hujusmodi libri publice doceantur, nisi simul a magistris sapientibus quibus venenum corrigi possit remedia applicentur. Morbum hunc comparari libet cum hydrophobia,’ &c. ( Leviathan, cap. xxix.)
He tried, however, to establish a distinction of his own—that a king was one who governed according to the law of nature, and a tyrant one who autraged it.
See Noodt On the Power of Sovereigns, and Gronovius On the Royal Law, both of which were translated into French by Barbeyrac—the first in 1707, and the second in 1714. They were both in the form of lectures delivered near the end of the seventeenth century before the University of Leyden, and are both, I think, rather dismal performances. Noodt was a strenuous advocate of liberty of conscience, and also one of the principal assailants of the theological superstitions about usury. Gronovius is best remembered for his Annotations of Grotius, in which he strongly repudiated the servile political maxims of that writer
See some striking remarks on this in Froude's Nemesis of Faith, pp. 160, 161.
What, for example, could be more opposed to the spirit of the modern Evangelical party, which is supposed by some to represent the Puritanism of the 17th century, than those noble lines of the great poet of the latter?—
Cibrario, Economia Politica del Medio Evo , vol. ii. p. 247 (2d ed.). This tendency was turned to ridicule by Ulrich von Hutten in a very witty but very profane adaptation of the Fables of Ovid to the Christian history ( Epistolœ Obscurorum Virorum [London, 1689], pp. 103–107), and also by Rabelais.
The name was given during the life of Montaigne, who praised it. ( Essais, liv. i. c. 27.) La Boétie, unfortunately, died when only in his thirty second year, and nearly all his works appear to have been posthumous They have all been republished at Paris, by Léou Fougère, in 1846.
It appeared for the first time, together with the Franco-Gallia, in a seditious book called Mémoires de l'estat de France sous Charles IX. See Les Historiettes de Tallemant des Réaux (ed. 1834), tom. 1. p. 395.
See some very good remarks on this in Chevalier, Lettrs sur l'Organisation de Travail (1848), p. 17.
Chivalrv (cheval).
On the earlier part of the history of the comparative importance of cavalry and infantry, see the very clear account in a work of the present French Emperor, Du Passé et de l'Avenir de l'Artillerie; and on the later part, and especially on the influence of Vauban, the brilliant sketch of the revolutions in the art of war in the last volume of Thiers’ Hist. de l'Empire M. Thiers has made some striking remarks on the effects of the sceptica movement of the eighteenth century upon war—disturbing the old traditions of the art, and culminating in the innovations of Napoleon. The democratic importance of the ascendency of infantry has been noticed by Condorcet, Tableau de l'Esprit humain, p. 144. Condorcet, however, has ascribed that ascendency exclusively to gunpowder. See, too, Cibrario, Economia Publics del Medio Evo, tom. i. pp. 334, 335
This has been noticed by many political economists, but by no one more ably than by Mr. Buckle.
As a distinguished Anglican divine of our own day has put it, ‘It is idle, and worse than idle, to attempt to restrict and explain away this positive command (“Resist not evil”), and the Christian Church has always upheld it in its full extent With one uniform unhesitating voice it has proclaimed the duty of passive obedience.’ (Sewell, Christian Politics, ch. x.)
I have already referred to the bull of Gregory XVI. attesting this contradiction. I may add the following admission of a writer who may be regarded as one of the principal representatives of the Ultramontane party, which has always been the most liberal in politics:—‘Quoique nous tombions d'accord que la source ou l'origine de la puissance publique réside dans la multitude, nous nions cependant que la puissance publique étant une fois transférée au prince, le peuple conserve toujours sur lui un droit de souveraineté. Nous disons, au contraire, qu'il ne lui reste plus dès lors que le devoir d'obéir, et qu'il n'existe qu'un cas où il puisse se soustraire à cette obéissance, comme en conviennent les plus ardents défenseurs de la puissance royale, savoir, celui où le prince deviendrait l'ennemi public et déclaré de tout son peuple, et où il chercherait à détruire la société civile.’ (Bianchi com. i. p. 84.)
See, for some striking evidence of these sentiments, the Discours par un Ministre Patriot sur le projet d'accorder l'état civil aux Protestants, by the Abbé de L'Enfert (Paris, 1787).
Bayle, Dict., art. Faustus Socinus, Remarque c.
La Sagesse, p. iii.
Many have ascribed the Avis aux Refugiez to Bayle. The charge, however, seems (as far as I know) destitute of external evidence, and, considering the great zeal with which Bayle threw himself into the defence of the Calvinists when they were attacked by Maimbourg, is rather improbable. Arguments of style are very untrustworthy, because a great writer always produces many imitators, and Bayle's style was by no means difficult to imitate. However, Bayle's aversion to democratic theories pervades all his works, and Hallam says the presumption is strongly in favour of his having written the Avis, while Gibbon and Mackintosh speak of it as certainly his. Voltaire, as is well known, has a far deeper stain upon his memory—a dark damning stain which all his splendid services can never efface: he applauded the partition of Poland.
Thiers.
This was, if I remember right, the expression of Cardinal Artonelli is one of his despatches.
The first step, according to Madame Fusil ( Souvenirs d'une Actriœ, pp. 27–54), in this direction was taken by an actress named Madame Saint-Hubert, who discarded powder and took the ancient sculptures as her model; but it was the genius of Talma, warmly seconded by the antiquarians, by the revolutionists, and especially by the Girondins, that finally vanquished the prevailing prejudice. The incongruity of the old costume has, I think, been exaggerated: it was well suited to the Greeks—of Racine.
See a singularly curious essay on the history of Gardens in Vitet, Études sur l'Histoire de l'Art. Le Nôtre laid out the gardens of Versailles for Louis XIV.
As, for example, when it is contended that a people with representative government are slaves, except during the period of the elections. ( Contrat Social, liv. iii. ch. xv.)
The effects of slavery upon character have lately been treated with very remarkable ability in Cairnes’ Slave Power. See also Storch, Econ Politique, tom. v., and Ch. Comte, Traité de Législation, lib. v.
See on this subject Plutarch, Lives of the Gracchi; Dionysius, Halicarnassus, lib. ii cap. 28; Columella, De Re Rusticâ . This whole subject has been very ably treated by M. Comte, Traité de Législation. See also Blanqui, Histoire d'Eccnomie Politique; Dureau de la Malle, Economie Politique des Romains
The distinctions have been fully developed by Cairnes and De Tocque ville.
See much horrible evidence of the atrocities practised on Roman slaves an Loiseleur, Élude sur les Crimes et les Peines dans l'Antiquité et les Temps Modernes (Paris, 1863), pp. 83–98; and in Comte, Traité de Législation , liv. v. There is an extremely good essay on the condition of the ancient slaves—one of the best ever written on the subject—in Bodin's Republic , lib i. c. 5.
This movement has been well noticed by Grotius, De Jure , lib. iii. c. 14
Guizot.
Cod. Theod . lib. ii. tit. 8, lex 1, and iv. 7, 1. For the history of the action of Christianity upon slavery, see A. Comte, Philosophie Positive , tom vi. pp. 43–47; Storch, Economic Politique , tom. v. pp. 306–310; Troplong, Influence du Christianisme sur le Droit Civil . The measures against Jew slave-owners have been noticed by Bédarride, Du Lac, and many other writers. It must be acknowledged, however, that the Christian Emperor Gratian made one law which may rank with the most atrocious of Paganism. It provides that if a slave accused his master of any crime except high treason, the justice of the charge was not to be examined, but the slave was to be committed to the flames: ‘Cum accusatores servi dominis intonent, nemo judiciorum expectet eventum, nihil quæri, nihil discuti placet, sed cum ipsis delationum libellis, cum omni scripturarum et meditati criminis apparatu, nefandarum accusationum crementur auctores: excepto tamen adpetitæ majestatis crimine, in quo etiam servis honesta proditio est. Nam et hoc ‘acinus tendit in dominos.’— Cod. Theod . ix. 6, 2. Honorius accorded slaves the liberty of accusing their masters in cases of heresy, and Theodosius in cases of paganism.
Wright, Letter on the Political Condition of the English Peasantry during the Middle Ages . London, 1843.
Champagny, La Charité Chrétienne , pp. 275–289.
See on this subject Périn, Ia Richesse dans les Sociétés Chrétiennes , tom i. pp. 345–361; Van Bruyssel, Hist. du Commerce Belge , tom. i. pp. 58, 59.
Eden, History of the Labouring Classes in England , vol. i. p. 50.
Grote, Hist. of Greece , vol. ii. p. 123.
Hume has very ingeniously suggested, and Malthus has adopted the suggestion, that the ancient permission of infanticide had on the whole a tendency to multiply rather than to diminish population; for, by removing the fear of a numerous family, it induced the poor to marry recklessly; while, once the children were born, natural affection would struggle to the last to sustain them.
It is worthy of notice that deserted children in the early Church appear to have been supported mainly by private charity, and those foundling hospitals, to which political economists so strongly object, were unknown. In the time of Justinian, however, we find notices of Brephotrophia, or asylums for children; and foundations, intended especially for foundlings, are said to have existed in the seventh and eighth centuries (Labourt, Recher-ches sur les Enfants trouvés , Paris, 1848, pp. 32, 33). A foundling hospital was established by Innocent III. at Rome. The objections to these institutions, on account of their encouragement of vice, as well as the frightful mortality prevailing among them, are well known. M'Culloch states that between 1792 and 1797 the admissions into foundling hospitals in Dublm were 12, 786, and the deaths 12,561 ( Pol. Econ . part i. ch. viü.). Magdalen asylums, which M. Ch. Comte and other economists have vehemently denounced, were also unknown in the early Church. The first erected in France was early in the thirteenth century; the famous institution of the Bon Pasteur was founded by a Dutch lady converted to Catholicism in 1698. A full History of these institutions is given in Parent-Duchatelet's singularly intcresting work on Prostitution in the City of Paris . The admirable societies for the succour of indigent mothers, which complete the measures for the protection of infancy, were chiefly the work of the French freethinkers of the last century. Beaumarchais dedicated part of the profits of the Mariage de Figaro to that of Lyons (Ducellier, Hist. des Classes Laborieuses en France , p. 296).
See some very striking instances of this in Champagny's Charité Chrétienne
This is, I believe, related of St. John of the Cross. There is a some what similar legend of a Spanish saint of the thirteenth century named Ramon Monat. The Virgin appeared to him and offered him a crown of roses, which he refused, and Christ then gave him His own crown of thorns.
In 1102 a Council of Westminster found it necessary to prohibit the sare of slaves in England (Eden, Hist. of Labouring Classes , vol. i. p. 10); and still later the English were accustomed to sell slaves to the Irish, and Giraldus Cambrensis tells us that the emancipation of their slaves as an act of devotion was enjoined by the Irish bishops on the occasion of Strong-bow's invasion. Bodin has noticed some passages from the bulls of the Popes relative to slaves in Italy as late as the thirteenth century ( République , p. 43). Religion, which so powerfully contributed to the emancipation, in some cases had an opposite influence, for Christians enslaved without scruple Jews and Mohammedans, who naturally retaliated. The number of Christian slaves bought up by the Jews had been one of the complaints of Agobard in the ninth contury.
See on all these causes Hallam's Middle Ages , vol. i. pp. 217, 218.
‘The clergy, and especially several Popes, enforced manumission as a duty upon laymen, and inveighed against the scandal of keeping Christians in bondage; but they were not, it is said, as ready in performing their own parts. The villeins upon the Church lands were among the last who were emancipated.’—Hallam, Middle Ages , vol. i. p. 221.
‘It wants not probability, though it manifestly appears not, that William Rufus, Henry I., and King Stephen, being all usurpers, granted large hamunities to burghs to secure them to their party, and by the time that Glanvil wrote, which was in the reign of Henry II., burghs had so great privileges as that, if a bondsman or servant remained in a burgh as a burgess or member of it a year and a day, he was by that very residence made free; and so it was in Scotland: he was always free, and enjoyed the liberty of the burgh if he were able to buy a burgage, and his lord claimed him not within a year and a day.’—Brady, Historical Treatise on Cities (1690) , p. 18.
3 The decline of serfdom has been treated by Hallam, Hist. of Middle Ages , vol. i. pp. 222, 223. As late as 1775, colliers in Scotland were bound to perpetual service in the works to which they belonged. Upon the sale ol those works the purchasers had a right to their services, nor could they be elsewhere received into service except by permission of the owner of the collieries. See a note by M'Culloch, in his edition of the Wealth of Nations , vol. ii. p. 186.
Thierry, Hist. du Tiers Etat , pp. 24, 25. It is scarcely necessary to refer to the admirable sketch of the history of towns in the Wealth of Nations .
By J. B. Say, in his Traité d'Economie Politique , where the subject of usury is admirably discussed. The term, ‘interest of assurance,’ however, is defective, because it does not comprise the opprobrium cast upon the lender, which is one great cause of the extraordinary rise of interest.
As this is not a treatise of Political Economy, the reader will, I trust, pardon my adopting this old and simple formulary, without entering at length into the controversy created by the new formulary of Ricardo—that price is regulated by the cost of production. In the vast majority of cases these two formularies lead to exactly the same result, and the principal advantage of that of Ricardo seems to be, first, that in some cases it gives greater precision than the other, and secondly, that it supplements the other, meeting a few cases to which the old formulary will not apply. In determining the value of the precious metals as measurea by other things—that is to say, as reflected in prices—the rule of Ricardo seems most satisfactory: in determining the normal rate of interest, the old rule is, I think, perfectly adequate. There are some good remarks on this in Chevallier, Econ Polit . sec v. c. l.
All the old Catholic works on the Canon Law and on Moral Philosophy show this, but I may especially indicate Concina, Adversus Usuram (Romæ, 1746); Concina, Usura Contractus trini (Romæ, 1748); Leotardus, De Usuris (Lugduni, 1649); Lamet et Fromageau, Dictionnaire des Cas de Conscience (a collection of the decisions of the doctors of the Sorbonne), art. Usure (Paris, 1733); and Conferences Ecclésiastiques de Paris sur l'Usure (Paris, 1748). This last work was published under the direction or, at all events, patronage of Cardinal de Noailles, and contains a very large amount of information on the subject. It went through several editions: the first was published in 1697. See too Liégeois, Essai sur l'Histoire et la Lêgisla’ turn de l'Usure .
This appears to have been the case in England, where the laxity on the subject was considerable, In the twelfth and thirteenth centuries (see Anderson, Hist. of Commerce , vol. i. pp. 79–113). Only a month before the Council of Nice, Constantine had confirmed the old Roman law which legalised an interest of 12 per cent.; and it was probably the desire to avoid collision with the civil power that dictated the language of a curious decree of the Council, in which usury is condemned only when practised by clergymen, but at the same time is condemned on grounds that are equally applicable to laymen: ‘Quoniam multi sub regula constituti avaritiam et turpia lucra sectantur, oblitique divinæ Scripturæ dicentis, “Qui pecuniam suam non dedit ad usuram,” mutuum dantes centesimas exigunt; juste censuit sancta et magna synodus ut si quis inventus fuerit post hanc definitionem usuras accipiens … dejiciatur a clero et alienus existat a regula.’ (See Troplong, Mémoire sur le Prêt à l’ Intérêt , read before the Institute in 1844.) But the Council of Eliberis, in the beginning of the fourth century, and the Third and Fourth Councils of Carthage, expressly condemned usury in laymen.
The following were the principal definitions of usury employed by the writers on Canon Law:—1. Usura est pretium usus pecuniæ mutuatæ. 2. Lucrum immediate ex mutuo proveniens. 3. Usura est cum quis plus exigat in pecuniâ aut in aliquâ re quam dederit. 4. Ultra sortem lucrum aliquodipsius ratione mutui exactum.—This last is the definition of Benedict XIV. Melanchthon defined usury nearly in the same way: ‘Usura est lucrum suprn sortem exactum tantum propter officium mutuationis.’ To this I may add the description given by St. Augustine of the sin: ‘Si fœneraveris homini, id est mutuam pecuniam dederis, a quo aliquid plus quam dedisti expectas accipere, non pecuniam solam sed aliquid plus quam dedisti, sive illud triticum sit, sive vinum, sive oleum, sive quodlibet aliud, si plus quam dedisti expectas accipere fœnerator es et in hoc improbandus non laudandus’ (Sermon iii. on Psalm xxxvi.).—See Concina, Adversus Usuram , pp. 32, 33.
In 1677, when much casuistry had been already applied to the subject, some one submitted this point to the doctors of the Sorbonne. Their decision was: ‘Que Titius ne seroit pas exempt d'usure en ne prenant que trois pourcent d'intérêt, parceque tout profit et tout gain tiré du prêt, si petit qu'il puisse être, fait l'usure. l'Ézéchiel au ch. xviii. ne fait point de distinction du plus ou du moins.’—Lamet et Fromageau, Dict, des Cas de Conscience (Art. Usure ).
Thus Innocent XI. condemned the proposition, ‘Usura non est dumultra sortem aliquid exigitur tanquam ex benevolentia et gratitudine debitum, sed solum si exigatur tanquam ex justitia debitum.’—See Conférences sur l’ Usure, tom. i. p. 100.
‘Tandis que le cri des peuples contre le prêt à intérêt le faisait pros-entre, l'impossibilité de l'abolir entièrement fit imaginer la subtilité de l'aliénation du capital; et c'est ce système qui étant devenu presque général parmi les théologiens a été adopté aussi par les jurisconsultes, à raison de l'influence beaucoup trop grande qu'ont eue sur notre jurisprudence et notre législation les principes du droit canon.’ (Turgot, Mém. sur les Prêts d’ Argent , 8 29.) Some seem to have tried to justify usury on the condition of the lender obliging himself not to demand his money till a certain period, for we find Alexander VII. condemning the proposition, ‘Quod sit licitum mutuanti aliquid ultra sortem exigere, modo se obliget ad non repetendum sortem naque ad certum tempus.’ ( Conférences sur l’ Usure, tom. i. p. 100.)
These cases, of which I have only noticed the principal, and which were many of them very complicated, were discussed with much detail by the doctors of the Sorbonne. See Lamet et Fromageau; see also the Mémoire of Troplong.
St Thomas Aquinas was believed to be hostile to this indulgence.
Besides Lamet and Fromageau, there is a discussion as to ‘Monti di Pietà’ in Escobar's Moral Philosophy .
Conférences sur l’ Usure , tom. i. p. 23. Salelles, De Materiis Tribunalium Inquisitionis (Romæ, 1651), tom. ii. p. 156. According to Cibrario ( Economia Politica del Medio Evo , vol. ii. p. 52), a heretic named Bech, who was burnt in Piedmont in 1388, was accused among other things of having maintained that ‘incest and usury are not sins.’
Chartario, Praxis Interrogandarum Rerum (Romæ, 1618), p. 201
This is an absurdity of Aristotle, and the number of centuries during which it was incessantly asserted without being (as far as we know) once questioned is a curious illustration of the longevity of a sophism when expressed in a terse form and sheltered by a great name. It is enough to make one ashamed of one's species to think that Bentham was the first to bring into notice the simple consideration that if the borrower employs the borrowed money in buying bulls and cows, and if these produce calves to ten times the value of the interest, the money borrowed can scarcely be said to be sterile or the borrower a loser. The Greek word for interest (TÓKOS, from TĹKTW, I beget) was probably connected with this delusion. Besides a host of theologians, the notion that usury was contrary to the law of nature was maintained by Domat, one of the greatest names in French jurisprudence. Leo X. condemned usury on the following grounds: ‘Dominus noster, Lucâ attestante, aperte nos præcepto adstrinxit ne ex dato mutuo quidquam ultra sortem speraremus; est enim propria usurarum interpretatio quando videlicet ex usurâ rei quæ non germinat de nullo labore, nullo sumptu, nullo peri culo, lucrum fœnusque conquiri studetur.’ ( Conférences sur l’ Usure , tom. i. p. 100.)
The views of St. Thomas (who was one of the chief authorities on the subject) are in the Summa , Pars ii. Quæst. 78. At the end of the eighteenth century they were drawn up with great elaboration by a writer named Pothier, and torn to pieces by Turgot ( Mém. sur les Prêts d’ Argent , § 26, 27). The argument as I have stated it is, I know, very obscure, but I venture to think that is chiefly the fault of St. Thomas.
The chief passages cited were— Lev. xxv. 36, Deut xxiii. 19, Ps. xv. 5, Ezek . xviii., and (from the New Testament) Luke vi. 35. As Turgot notices, the popular interpretation of this last passage was peculiarly inexcusable in Catholics, who always interpret the injunctions that surround it as ‘counsels of perfection,’ not obligatory on every man. Yet Bossuet was able to say, ‘La tradition constante des conciles, à commencer par les plus anciens, celle des Papes, des pères, des interprètes et de l'Eglise Romaine, est d'interpréter ce verset, “Mutuum date nihil inde sperantes,” comme prohibitif du profit qu'on tire du prét; “inde” c'est à dire de l'usure.’ ( 2nde Pastorale, contres la Version de Richard Simon. )
Montesquieu, speaking of the scholastic writings on usury, says, with a little exaggeration, ‘Ainsi nous devons aux spéculations des Scholastiques touts les malheurs qui ont accompagné la destruction du commerce’ ( Esprit des Lois , lib. xxi. c. 20); and Turgot, ‘L'observation rigoureuse de ces lois serait destructive de tout commerce; aussi ne sont-elles pas observées rigou-reusement. Elles interdisent toute stipulation d'intérêt sans aliénation du capital…. Et c'est une chose notoire qu'il n'y a pas sur la terre une place de commerce où la plus grande partie du commerce ne roule sur l'argent emprunté sans aliénation du capital’ ( Mém. sur les Prêts d’ Argent , § xiv.). M. Sismondi has justly observed ( Nouveaux Principes d'Economie Politique ) that the prohibition of usury in Catholic countries has also done very much to promote a passion for luxury, and to discourage economy—the rich who were not engaged in business finding no easy way of employing their savings productively.
Confirming in this respect a French law of the eighth and ninth century which provided that ‘Usuram non solum clerici, sed nec laici Christiani, ex-agere debent.’ Some think Justinian prohibited usury, but there is a good deal of dispute about this. Richard I. of England ‘Christianum fœneratorem fieri prohibuit aut quacunque conventionis occasione aliquid recipere ultra id quod mutuo concessit’ ( Bromton Chronicon ). Some governors made it a law that the property of those who had been usurers might be confiscated by the crown after their death (Cibrario, Economia Politica del Medio Evo , vol. iii. p. 319). This arrangement had a double advantage: the government might borrow money from the usurer while he was living, and rob his children when he was dead.
According to the doctors of the Sorbonne, it was sinful to borrow at usury except under extreme necessity, but the whole stress of the denunciations was directed against the lenders.
Bédarride, Hist. des Juifs , pp. 186–189.
Muratori, Antiq. Italicœ , dissert. xvi.—a good history of the rise of Christian usurers.
Ibid.
Ibid. This Council is reckoned a general one by the Catholica
Ibid. The Council of Vienne, presided over by Clement V., pronounced it to be heretical to justify usury: ‘Sane si quis in istum errorem inciderit, ut pertinaciter affirmare præsumat exercere usuras non esse peccatum, decernimus eum velut hæreticum puniendum.’ ( Conférences sur l’ Usure , tom. i. p. 93.)
According to Concina, usury has been condemned by twenty-eight Councils (six of them regarded by the Church of Rome as general), and by seventeen popes ( Adversus Usuram , pp. 112, 113).
See the passages in Concina, Usura trini ContractÛs , pp. 250, 251.
Concina, Adversus Usuram , p. 2. This view was also adopted by Molinæus: ‘Carolus Molinæus contendit aĉerrime usuram, nisi fraus adsit ant debitor nimium opprimatur, licitam esse. Doctores omnes a sexcentis annis contrarium docuerunt’ (Leotardus, De Usuris , p. 15). Calvin was one of the very first who exposed the folly of the old notion about the sterility of money: see a remarkable passage in one of his letters quoted by M'Culloch, Pol. Econ. , pt. iii. ch. viii.
Anderson, Hist. of Commerce , vol. i. p. 304.
De Jure Belli et Pacis , lib. ii. cap. 12.
Better known as Salmasius, the author of the Defensio Regis to which Milton replied.
Le Fevre, who was tutor to Louis XIII., mentions that in his time the term interest had been substituted for usury, and he added: ‘C'est là pro-prement ce qu'on peut appeler l'art de chicaner avec Dieu.’ Marot also, who wrote in the first half of the sixteenth century, made this change the object of a sarcasm:—
(See Conférences sur l’ Usure , tom. i. p. 25.)
According to Concina, the first, or nearly the first ( fere primus ), Catholic theologian who cavilled at the old definitions of usury was Le Coreur, who wrote a treatise in 1682, in which he maintained that moderate interest might be exacted on commercial loans, but not on those which had their origin in the necessities of poverty ( Adversus Usuram , p. 3). The Catholic writers at this period nearly always spoke of the modern doctrine as a Protestant heresy—the heresy of Calvin, Molinæus, and Salmasius.
One of these was elaborately discussed by Concina in a treatise called De Usura trini ContractÛs (Romæ, 1748). Owners, which arose especially in the commercial communities of Belgium, are noticed in Lamet and Fromageau, and also by Troplong.
Pichler was a Jesuit, and his views on usury—a perfect cloud of subtleties—are contained in his Jus Canonicum (Venetiis, 1730), lib. iii. tit. 19. Tanner was also a Jesuit. Of Hannold I know nothing except from the brief notice of his opinions in Concina, De Usura trini ContractÛs , pp 152–155.
‘Peccati genus illud quod usura vocatur, quodque in contractu mutui propriam suam sedem et locum habet, in eo est repositum quod quis ex ipsomet mutuo, quod suapte natura tantundem duntaxat reddi postulat quantum receptum est, plus sibi reddi velit quam est receptum.’— Epistola Bened. XIV. , in Concina, Adversus Usuram , p. 14.
‘Neque vero ad istam labem purgandam ullum arcessiri subsidium poterit, vel ex eo quod id lucrum non excedens et nimium sed moderatum, non magnum sed exiguum sit; vel ex eo quod is a quo id lucrum solius caused mutui deposcitur non pauper sed dives existat; nec datam sibi mutuo sum mam relicturus otiosam, sed ad fortunas suas amplificandas vel novis coemen dis prædiis vel questuosis agitandis negotiis utilissime sit impensurus.’— Ibid.
See his Considerations on the Lowering of Interest , published in 1691—a tract which is, unfortunately, deeply tinged with the errors of the mercantile theory, but is full of shrewd guesses on the laws of money. Locke perceived that interest depended upon supply and demand, and that all attempts to reduce it below the natural level were pernicious or abortive. He thought, however, that the maximum should be fixed by law to prevent imposition, but that that maximum should be fixed above the natural rate. At a still earlier period Harrington saw the necessity of usury, but involved himself in great obscurity, and almost absurdity, when discussing it: see his Prerogative of Popular Government , c. 3.
Storch, Economie Politique , tom. iii. p. 187.
Adam Smith wished the legal interest to be fixed a very little above the current rate of interest, as a check upon prodigality and rash speculation. This is still done in many countries, but Bentham showed decisively (Letter xiii., On Usury ) that such a law is extremely detrimental to industrial progress, as each new enterprise is almost necessarily more hazardous than old-established ones, and therefore capitalists will only direct their capital to the former if the interest to be obtained from them is considerably higher than could be obtained from the latter. To which it may be added that any attempt to dictate by law the terms on which a man may lend his money is an infringement of the rights of property, and that the borrower is much more likely to know at what rate he may profitably borrow than the legislator.
Besides the Mémoire , Turgot noticed the subject in a very striking manner in his Réflexions sur la Formation des Richesses . Like nearly every one in his time, he fell into the error of believing that the abundance of the precious metals told upon the rate of interest; but this did not affect his main argument, and on the whole there is not much in Bentham that was not anticipated by Turgot. In Italy Genovesi, who was a contemporary of Turgot, advocated the abolition of usury laws. (Pecchio, Storia della Economia Pubblica in Italia , p. 114.)
Storch, Economie Politique , tom. iii p 175.
I use this expression because that obscure subject which Papebrochius and Mabillon have investigated, and which they have called Diplomacy, is much more what we should now term the History of Charters. The rise and influence of consulships has been traced in English by Warden, in French by Borel, and in Latin by Steck. The subject has been also well noticed by Van Bruyssel, Hist. du Commerce Belge , tom. i. p. 140; and the influence of diplomacy as superseding General Councils, by Littré, Révolution, Conservation et Positivisme , one of the ablest books the Positive School has ever produced The distinction between the old and new sense of diplomacy is expressed respectively in the words ‘la diplomatique’ and ‘la diplomatie,’ the last of which is less than a century old. (See De Plassan, Hist. de la Diplomatie Française , Introd.) I may add that one of the first systems of navigation law depended upon an institution called the ‘Consulship of the Sea,’ which consisted of a tribunal of leading merchants authorised to determine disputes.
As their latest historian says, ‘Le Christianisme ne prit une véritable consistance que sous la règne de Constantin; et c'est à dater de cette époque que commence, à proprement parler, pour les Juifs l'ère des persécutions religiouses.’ (Bédarride, Hist. des Juifs, p. 16.) In this, however, as in other persecutions, the Arians were quite as bad as the orthodox. Constantius persecuted at least as much as Constantine, and the Spanish Visigoths more than either.
On the liberality of several Popes to the Jews, see Bédarride, p. 260, on Alexander II., pp. 114–123. St. Bernard also laboured to assuage the persecution. Alexander VI. was especially generous to the Jews, and made great efforts to alleviate their sufferings—a fact that should be remembered in favour of a Pope for whom there is not much else to be said.
For a long list of these prohibitions see a curious book, De Judœis (Turin, 1717), by Joseph Sessa (one of the judges appointed in Piedmont to regulate the affairs of the Jews), p. 10. As early as the reign of Constantine a Council of Elvira forbade Christians holding any communication with Jews. The Council of the Lateran compelled Jews to wear a separate dress; and this very simple provision, by bringing them prominently before the people in an intensely fanatical age, contributed greatly to rouse the passions of the Catholics, and to facilitate the massacres that ensued (see Rios, Études sur les Juifs d'Espagne [trad. Maynabel], p. 109). St. Vincent Ferrier persuaded the Spanish Government to enforce this decree against both Jews and Moors. (Paramo, De Orig. Inq p. 164.)
Œuvres de St. Foix, tom. iv. pp. 88, 89. A similar enactment was made in Spain (Rios, pp. 88, 89). It was also a popular belief that the blood of Jews was black and putrid, and the bad smell for which they were unhappily notorious innate. There is a long discussion on this in Sessa. But perhaps the most curious instance of this order of superstitions is a statute of Queen Joanna I., in 1347, regulating the houses of all-fame at Avignon, in which after providing with great detail for the accommodation of the Christians, it is enacted that no Jew shall be admitted under severe penalties (Sabatier, Hist. de la Législation sur les Fenimes Publiques , p. 103). The authenticity of this statute has been questioned, but M. Sabatier seems to have succeeded in defending it, and he has shown that in 1408 a Jew was actually flogged at Avignon for the offence in question (pp. 105, 106). This extreme horror of Jews furnished Ulrich von Hutten with the subject of one of the happiest pieces of irony he ever wrote—the exquisite description of the mental agonies of a student of Frankfort, who, mistaking a Jew for a magistrate of the city, took off his hat to him, and on discovering his error was unable to decide whether he had committed a mortal or only a venial sin. ( Epistol. Obscurorum Virorum , ep. 2.)
Michelet, Origines de Droit, p. 368
The Duchess of Brabant, having some scruples of conscience about tolerating the Jews, submitted the case to St. Thomas. He replied, among other things, that the Jews were doomed to perpetual servitude, and that all their property being derived from usury may be lawfully taken from them, to be restored to those who paid the usury, or, if this is impossible, to be applied to some pious purpose. (See this curious letter, given at length in Van Bruyssel, Hist, du Commerce Belge , tom. i. pp. 239, 240.) On the general doctrine that property derived from usury may be confiscated by the civil power, see Paramo, De Orig. Inquisit. p. 167.
There was a good deal of controversy in the middle ages about whether the Jews should be permitted to practise usury. The liberty seems to have been first openly granted in the commercial towns of Italy, but it gradually spread, and was admitted by some Popes. Sessa gives the reasons that were avowed by theologians: ‘Usuræ Judaicæ tolerantur quidem ex permissione Principum et summorum Pontificum in Hebræis ut de gente deperditâ, et quorum salus est desperata, et ad eum finem ne Christiani fœnoris exercitio strangulentur a Christianis’ ( De Judœis , p. 9). The permission was granted in Piedmont in 1603. St. Lewis refused to permit the Jews to exercise usury (Troplong), and the Spanish rulers seem to have vacillated on the subject (Bédarride, pp. 192–194). There can be no doubt the monopoly of usury which the Jews possessed did more to enrich than all their persecutions to impoverish them. For although, as Adam Smith observes, the current rate of interest should represent approximately the average of profits, this is only when it is free, and the exertions of divines and legislators in the middle ages had raised it far above the high rate it would then naturally have borne. It seems to have usually ranged between 25 and 40 per cent. In 1430 we find the Florentines, in order to reduce the current rate, admitting the Jews into their city, whence they had previously been excluded, on the condition of their lending money as low as 20 per cent. (Cibrario, vol. iii. p. 318). It is curious to observe how, while persecution prevented the Jews from ever amalgamating with other nations, the system of usury prevented them from ever perishing or sinking into insignificance.
The Jews offered 30,000 ducats to remain. The Queen, it is said, for a time hesitated, but Torquemada, confronting her on the threshold of the palace with a crucifix in his Land, exclaimed, ‘Judas sold his God for thirty pieces of silver—you are about to sell him for thirty thousand’ (Bédarride and Prescott). The anecdote is related by Paramo, p. 144, only he does not specify the sum.
Rios, Etudes sur les Juifs d'Espagne, p. 77. Rios says that the contemporary writers are unanimous about the number.
Ibid. pp. 79–82. Llorente, Hist, de l'Inquisition, tom. i. p. 141.
Rios gives a delightful Spanish complexion to all this: ‘L'apparition de Saint Vincent Ferrier devant le peuple Juif avait été un fait véritablement prodigieux. Il avait apparu à leurs yeux comme un ange sauveur, et cette circonstance ne pouvait qu'être favorable à sa haute mission évangélique. Le 8 juin 1391, les rues de Valence se remplissaient du sang des Juifs, les boutiques étaient brÛlées, les maisons de la Juiverie saccagées par une multitude affrénée, les malheureux Juifs conraient aux églises demandant le baptême, et ils étaient repoussés de toutes parts et ne rencontraient que la mort, quard au milieu de la populace St. Vincent Ferrier se présente et élevant sa voix inspirée, il met un terme à cette horrible carnage. La multitude se ‘ait. Les Juifs appelés par ce nouveau apôtre, qui se donna plus tard à lui-même le nom d'ange de l'Apocalypse, écoutent la parole divine et se convertissent. . Tout cela contribua puissamment au merveilleux ré'sultats de sa prédication’ (pp. 89, 90). St. Vincent was a Dominican, a very great preacher, and so very good that he always undressed in the dark lest he should see himself naked. For his miracles, his virtues, and the multitudes he converted, see his life in Spanish by Vincent Justiniano (Valentia, 1575). Paramo says that the Inquisitors discovered that no less than 17,000 of the converts of St Vincent returned to Judaism ( De Orig. Inq. p. 167).
Twelve, however, who were captured at Malaga during the siege in 1486 were impaled by Ferdinand.
They are detailed by Paramo.
Picus Mirandola.
It seems impossible to ascertain the number of the exiles with accuracy, for the Spanish historians vary greatly, from Cardoso who estimates it at 120,000, to Mariana who states it at 800,000 Paramo says some place it at more than 170,000, and others at more than 400,000 (p. 167). Justiniano says 420,000. Great numbers of the Jews avoided banishment by baptism.
Bédarride, pp. 291–301, Paramo, 235. Paramo says the Portuguese decree of banishment was simply changed for one of compulsory baptism.
The very extensive Jewish literature of the middle ages is fully reviewed by Bédarride and Rios. Maimonides is of course the greatest name. M Renan, in his essay on Averroes, has shown that nearly all the first translation into Latin of the works of Averroes were by Jews (chiefly by those of Mont pellier, who were especially famous for their learning), and that Averroism took deep root in Jewish teaching. Maimonides wrote a letter on the vanit, of astrology, which two popes applauded (Bédarride, p. 151). He was also distinguished for his liberal views about inspiration (Lee, On Inspiration, pp. 454–459). The controversial literature of the Jews directed against Christianity was extremely voluminous. A catalogue of these works, and a de scription of many of them, is given in a little book, called Bibliotheca Judaica Antichristiana, by John Bernard de Rossi (Parmæ, 1800).
A very old and general tradition ascribes the invention of the letter of exchange to Jews who, having been banished from France, had taken refuge in Lombardy. Nor does there seem to be anything of much weight to oppose to it, though some have contended that the Italians were the real inventors. At all events, the Jews appear to have been among the first to employ it. The earliest notice of letters of exchange is said to be in a statute of Avignon of 1243. In 1272 there was a Venetian law ‘De Litteris Cambin.’ Compare on this subject Villeneuve-Bargemont, Hist. d'Economie Politique, tom. i. pp. 277–279; Blanqui, Hist. d'Econ. Pol., tom. i. p. 183; Moutes quieu, Esprit des Lois, liv. xxi. c. 20; and the tractate of Jules Thieurry, la Lettre de Change (Paris, 1862).
Bédarride, pp. 258, 259. The magnificent synagogue at Leghorn (probably the finest in existence) was erected by the Spanish Jews who took refuge in that city.
See this ordinance (which was issued in 1294) in Blanqui, Hist. d'Economie Politique, tom. i. pp. 225, 226. It provided, among other things, that lakes, counts, and barons, who have 6,000 livres rent, may have four robes a year, and their wives as many. Knights with 3,000 livres rent may have three. No member of the middle class may wear any ornament of gold or precious stones, or any dress that was green or gray. As M. Blanqui observes, articles of luxury would have been imported necessarily from foreign countries into France, which would necessitate an export of French gold—according to the current notions the greatest evil that could befall the country.
Anderson, Hist, of Commerce, vol. i. p. 193. See, too, p. 179. More than a century after the passion for dress reached Scotland, when the alarmed and indignant legislators enacted (in 1457) that the wives and daughters of merchants should ‘be abuilzied [‘dressed,’ from ‘habiller’] gangand and cor respondent for their estate, that is to say, on their heads short curches [a kind of cap] with little hudes as are used in Flanders, England, and other countries, … and that na women weare tailes unfit in length, nor furred under but on the hailie daie.’ ( Ibid. vol. iii. pp. 280, 281.)
Blanqui. tom, i. p. 250.
Anderson, vol. i. p. 144.
Wade, History of the Middle and Working Classes.
Besides the great work of Malthus, there is an admirable exposition of this doctrine in Senior's Political Economy. Perhaps the most enthusiastic champion of luxury is Filangieri.
This has been noticed in a very forcible, but, of course, one-sided manner, by De Maistre, who recurs to the subject again and again in his works; also by Villeneuve-Bargemont, Economie Politique Chrétienne.
Pecchio, Storia della Economia Pubblica in Italia (Lugano, 1849), p. 11.
Anderson, Hist, of Commerce, vol. i. p. 117. The first English commercial companies were ‘the Merchants of the Staple’ and ‘the Merchants of St. Thomas à Becket.’
Van Bruyssel, Hist, du Commerce Belge, tom. i. p. 234.
See the stages of its development in Warden, On Consular Establishments.
The earliest notice Maepherson has been able to find of an English consol is in 1346 ( Annals of Commerce, vol. i. p. 536)
Before this time ambassadors were sent only on occasions of emergency The first instance of a resident ambassador seems to have been in 1455, when Francis Sforza, Duke of Milan, established one at Genos, and towards the close of the century the institution became somewhat common in Italy (Cibrario, Economia Politica, del Medio Evo [Torino, 1842], vol. i. p. 319). It was also about this time that the use of cipher in diplomacy became usual. ( Ibid De Plassan, Hist, de la Diplomatie Française, Introd.)
M. Blanqui has collected some extremely remarkable evidence of this ( Historie d'Economie Politique, tom. i. pp. 244–270). The Lombards also occasionally manifested extremely enlightened views on these subjects (see Rossi, Economie Politique, tom. i. p. 260), and Milan, perhaps longer than any other great town in Europe, was exempt from the mediæval system of corporations. However, the first Italian writer of considerable merit on Political Economy was probably Serra, who was a Neapolitan, and it was at Naples that the first Professorship of Political Economy in Europe was established in 1754 by the munificence of the Florentine Intieri.
As early as 1282, a magistracy had been constituted at Florence exclusively of merchants and the example was soon followed by Sienna, and in a great measure by Venice and Genoa. (See Blanqui, tom. i. p. 245; Rossi, tom. i. p. 266.)
Many of these views were almost identical with those of Mesmer and his followers. (See Bertrand, Hist, du Magnétisme Animal en France, pp 13–17.)
Sharon Turner's Hist, of England, vol. iv. pp. 39, 40.
See the Olynthiacs